Sep., 1891. 
BURMA AND ITS PEOPLE. 
197 
mysterious solemnity which stimulated the imagination in 
the highest degree. 
Before going further, I ought to say a few words in regard 
to Buddhism and its brotherhood of Monks, to whom I shall 
have so often to refer under their Burmese title of Hpoongyees 
(pronounced Poongis). Our personal intercourse with these 
men was very agreeable, and the religion, which is the faith 
of at least 100 millions of our fellow-men, is certainly worth 
a moment’s consideration. I shall speak of it, of course, 
purely in its historic aspect. 
Gautama, the Buddha, lived about the fifth century b.c., 
say twenty-four centuries ago, and was born not far from 
Benares, the son of a powerful land owner. Four miraculous 
visions, so the legend runs, led to his renunciation of the 
pomps and vanities of the world ; and, going to his father, he 
said, “ I wish to become a wandering ascetic, for all worldly 
things are transitory and vain.” He was about to enter upon 
his ascetic career when Mara appeared to him, that evil deity 
who tempts men to indulge their animal passions, and 
promised him the glories of empire if he would but return to 
the pleasures of a worldly life. Resisting the tempter, 
Gautama fled from his father’s domain, exchanged garments 
with a beggar, and became a thorough ascetic. Attaching 
himself as a disciple to the Brahmans, he found their 
pantheistic philosophy valueless; six years of fasting and 
self-mortification convinced him again of the insufficiency of 
this form of spiritual discipline. Finally, he gave himself up 
to prolonged meditation under a sacred fig-tree, and there 
resisted once more the attacks of Mara and his thousand 
demons ; at the end of a night of horrors the light of true 
knowledge dawned upon him, and after twenty-eight days of 
blissful self-abstraction he went forth to preach the new 
doctrine with which he had been illuminated. Soon a few 
disciples gathered round him to form his first brotherhood, 
and from this nucleus arose that vast religious system which, 
radiating from this central point, spread first over all India 
and thence over most of Eastern Asia. 
The cardinal principles of this faith are that all life involves 
pain and suffering, and that all suffering is caused by the 
craving for sensual pleasures, wealth, and personal existence. 
By long meditation and suppression of self, all earthly desires 
may be finally extinguished ; and by these means the Buddhist 
hopes, after death, to arrive at one of the many higher stages 
of being, through which he must pass in succession before he 
