80 



Mahinda, proceeding with his discourse, comes to the advent of 

 Gautama. He tells the king : — 



" The fourth divine sage, the comforter of the world, the omniscient 

 doctrinal lord, the vanquisher of the five deadly sins, in this ' kappa,' was 

 Gotama. 



"In the first advent to this land, he reduced the Yakkhos to subjection, 

 and then in his second advent, he established his power over the nagas. 

 Again, upon the third occasion, at the entreaty of the naga-king 

 Maniakkhi, repairing to Kalyani, he there, together with his attendant 

 disciples, partook of refreshment. Having tarried and indulged in (the 

 'samapatti' meditation) at the spot where the former bo-trees had been 

 placed; as well as on this very site of the (Buanwelli) dagoba (where 

 Mahinda was making these revelations to Devananpiyatissa), and having 

 repaired to the spots where the relics used (by the Buddhas themselves, 

 viz., the drinking- vessel, the belt, and the ablution robe had been 

 enshrined) ; as well as to the several places where preceding Buddhas 

 had tarried, the vanquisher of the five deadly sins, the great muni, the 

 luminary of Lanka, as at that period there were no human beings in the 

 land, having propounded his doctrines to the congregated devos and 

 the nagas, departed through the air to Jambudipo."* 



Here again neither the mountain nor the foot-print is made 

 mention of, and the fictitiousness of the whole narrative is made 



* These visits not having been foreseen, (see ante), but being essential at and 

 after 236 A. b. 'for the greater glory of Buddha,' there was an awkward necessity 

 compelling the Buddhist historians to limit the time occupied by the visits of 

 Buddha to Ceylon, and to force him to fly with electric speed, from Jeto (at Sa- 

 watthipura in India) to Lanka, and back from Lanka to Jeto, in the universally 

 accepted belief that no Buddha could possibly absent himself for a longer period 

 than twenty-four hours at any one time from the country in which he was 

 originally manifested. It is however, a lamentable fact, that occurrences no less 

 wonderful are gravely recorded in certain Jewisb, v Christian, and Mohammadan 

 writings, which are greatly reverenced, and the incidents of which are most 

 implicitly believed in by the superstitiously devout of large sections of each of 

 these religious communities. 



