$42 BUDDHA, BUDDHISM BUDDHA, BUDDHISM

exaggerations when Buddha’s name is mentioned;this is followed by a poetical version (gatha)which generally goes over the same ground asthe prose, but is written in a very peculiardialect, bristling with curiously ungrammatical-forms. 1 ’ These songs in this rude patois seemto us to be the original versions of the variouslegends, as they were recited by the unletteredmultitude; and they have been reduced to proseby some Buddhist monk who wrote Sanskrit justas a mediaeval monk of France or Germany wroteLatin. Other details of Buddha’s life, allmore or less marvellous, can be added fromthe other works in the Sanskrit collectionof Nepal and the Pali of Ceylon, and & largeproportion of the legends are found alike in everyBuddhist literature; but all are the production ofa subsequent period. We thus see that the veryfoundations of early Buddhist history are un-stable ; we find ourselves face to face with sacredballads, not contemporary chronicles; and wemight as well attempt to build up a certainhistory of regal Rome or of Greece before Pisi-stratus as to claim for the realm of authentichistory the period of the first rise of Buddhismin India.

The dates of the birth and death of SakyaMuni, or Buddha, have been generally fixed byEuropean scholars as b.c. 622 and 543 ; c but Pro-fessor Max Muller {Ancient Sanskrit Lit. pp. 298,299) has shewn good reason for preferring B.c.556 and 477, though even these dates are onlyconjectural; Professor Kern has recently triedto fix the date of the Nirvana as B.c. 370or 388. Buddha’s proper name was Sarvartha-siddha or Siddhartha ( u he by whom all ends areaccomplished,” Lai. V. p. 109), but his moreusual title is Sakya Muni, “ the holy sage of theSakyas.” He is also called Gautama, “ the de-scendant of Gotama,” or more properly SramanaGautama, “the Gautamid ascetic;” but theorigin of this name is obscure. The Buddhistsderive it from an old ancestor of the solar race,whose son Ikshwaku is said to have reigned nearTatta on the Indus (but cf. Ind.Studien , v. 425),

from whence long subsequently the Sakya branchof the family emigrated to Kapilavastu. On theother hand, Gotama is one of the old Vedic saintsof Hindu tradition; and as we find some of hisdescendants in later Sanskrit legends living atthe courts of the eastern part of India (Kuru-pan-chala, Videha, &c.), some of those who tracedtheir descent from him may have been familypriests of the Sakyas; and these latter mayhave assumed the family name of their spiritualdirectors (Burnouf, Introduction a VBist. duBuddhisme Indian, p. 155).

b This double narration distinguishes the so-calledVaipulya sutras, or “developed discourses,” from thesimple stftras; the latter are the earlier (see Burnouf,Introd. pp. 64, 124). This peculiarity is not found in thePali books.

c The Buddhists of Ceylon give these dates, but eventbese seem to have been falsified. The other Buddhistnations differ widely as to the dates of the two events.Thus the Tibetan books (Foucaux, Rgya Tck’er rol pa,p. xi.) give fourteen different dates of Buddha’s death,varying between b.c. 2422 and b.c. 576; and the Chinesedates similarly vary between b.c. 1130, 949, and 767ilbid.).

His father Suddhodana was the king of a littladistrict called Kapilavastu, and belonged to theKshatriya family of the Sakyas, who were abranch of the great family of Ikshwaku. Iksh-waku is also the ancestor of the Solar dynasty ofAyodhya (Oudh), the family in which the demi-god Rama was born, whose exploits are thesubject of the Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana. Itis curious that amidst the copious geographicalnotices which abound in Hindu Sanskrit litera-ture, the name Kapilavastu never occurs; andProfessor Wilson has even conjectured that ilmay have been merely an allegorical name as ex-pressing the relation between Buddhism and theSankhya philosophy of Kapila. d The universaltradition of all Buddhist nations is a strongargument that such a place must once haveexisted; yet it is singular that Brahmanicalprejudice should have suppressed all notice ofit. The Chinese Buddhist traveller Fahian (a.d.399-414) describes Kapilavastu as in his time“a wilderness untenanted by man;” and HiouenThsang (a.d. 630-644) speaks of the royal cityas in ruins; the palace was built of bricks,and its ruins were still lofty and solid, butdeserted for ages. Still their reports only provethat the site was traditionally identified at thattime; and as a thonsand years had passed sinceBuddha’s death, this popular belief may havehad no better foundation than that which iden-tifies Arthur with Glastonbury or Atreus withthe treasury at Mycenae. Kapilavastu lay in theeastern part of the ancient kingdom of Kosala,and was probably to the north of the presentGorakhpur. It is said to have been besiegedand destroyed, shortly after Buddha’s death, byVirudhaka, the king of Kosala.

The Lalita Vistara is supposed to have beenrepeated by Buddha in a bamboo grove in the

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garden of Jetavana, at Sravasti, to the Bodhi-sattwas and Sravakas who attended him; oneof these was Ananda, who professes to be therelator of the work in its present form. Therecital commences with the second chapter, thescene of which is laid in the Tushita heaven,where Buddha, then a Bodhisattwa or potentialBuddha, is represented as sitting in his palace,surrounded by countless millions of divine beings,who tell him that “ the time is come.” Hethen announces to them that he will be born ina mortal mother’s womb in twelve years. Thenfollows a curious discussion as' to the fated time,continent, region, and family, in which his lasthuman birth is to take place. He can only beborn in the full maturity of the world after oneof its ever-recurring creations—in a central con-tinent like India—in a central region of it, andin a family of the Brahman or Kshatriya caste,according as either may happen at the time tobe pre-eminent. As at this particular time thelatter is said to be the most honoured,® Buddha

d The Buddhists say that the exiled princes from Tatta(or Benares?) settled near the hermitage of the KisbiKapila, hence the name of their city, Kapila-vastu, “thedwelling of Kapila.” Vastu properly means “ substance,"but may be here used for vfistu, oarv.

e This seems to be connected with a very obscure pointin Indian literary history. In the Rig Veda the castesystem of later times is unknown; traces of the threetwice-born classes are indeed found (thus the Brahmansseem referred to in the word brahman, “ priest,” and some-