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with armies of monsters, but their utmost effortscau do nothing against his calm patience, and noweapon can touch or harm him. He next temptsthe sage with hosts of heavenly nymphs, but alltheir blandishments fail, and they end by singinghis praise. Mara makes a final effort with allhis armies to shake Sakya Muni’s fortitude, butfails; and he finally flies in confusion. [Cf. Josa-phat’s temptation in Barlaam and Josaphat .]The sage, thus left to his triumph, plunged intothe depths of meditation, and is represented asrevolving in his memory at once every pasttransmigration of every being in the universe;and he finally unravels the problem of existence,beginning from birth and misery, and step bystep rising by twelve stages to ignorance as theultimate cause of all things. This last beingannihilated, all the subsequent causes and effectsare annihilated; and thus at the last watch ofthe night Sakya Muni accomplished his object,and in his thirty-sixth year attained the perfectintelligence of a Buddha, and thus himself be-came a Tathagata.™ Mara now again appears totempt Buddha by counselling him at once toenjoy his perfect liberation and enter nirvana;but he declares that he will not enjoy it untilhe has established the “ law ” and the “ assembly ”in the world, and so provided for the happinessof mankind; and again the demon flies ashamed,crying “ my empire is over.” But though theexternal temptation fails, Buddha feels the fullforce of the same temptation from within; hereflects in his solitude how few will understandhis words, and what toil and insults will attendhim if he preaches his law; and he resolves toretain his knowledge to himself. Three timesthe gods, with Brahma at their head, implorehim in vain to change his purpose; but at lastthe sight of the miseries of the world overcomeshim, and he resolves “ to turn the wheel of thelaw.” He then considers whom he shall firstinstruct. By his supernatural knowledge hesees that both his old masters Rudraka andArada Kalama are just dead: he then bethinkshim of the five disciples who had left him atUruvilva, but who were now at Benares in thedeer park of Rishipattana. His disciples see himapproaching, and at first agree together thatthey will pay him no respect; but his majesticair forces them to rise from their seats, and theyfall at his feet, confess their error, and becomeonce more his devoted followers. The gods andheavenly beings then crowd round to hear

m This is the peculiar title of a Buddha—its significa-tion is not quite certain, since it is differently analysed byBuddhist writers as tathd-gata or tatha-dgata. Accordingto the former it would mean, “he who has gone as hisforerunners went,” according to the latter, “ he who hascome as his forerunners came.” A similar term is Sugata ,“ he who has auspiciously departed or walks happily.” TheBuddha means “ awakened,” “ wise,” from the rootbudh“ to know,’ whence also bodJii, “ supreme knowledge.”Sfikya Muni, after he became Buddha, is also calledBhagavat, “ adorable,” a term continually applied to godsand saints in Brahmanical literature; and also Jina,“ the conqueror,” a term which afterwards produced thename Jaina as the title of the later sect which alone at thepresent time represents Buddhism in India. Hindu le-gend generally represents Buddha as the ninth Incarnation(avatara) of Vishnu, who descended in this form to deludethe daityas. The name Buddha has probably no connec-tion with Budha, the regent of the planet Mercury.

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Buddha’s first discourse, in which he propounds“the four sublime truths,” so celebrated inBuddhist literature : “ pain—its origin—its pre-vention—the way.” The southern Buddhists saythat “ though he spoke in the language of Ma-gadha, each one of his hearers thought that hespoke in his own language; and all the differentspecies of animals, great and small, listened to himunder the same supposition.” (Hardy, Manual ,p. 187 ; cf. Lalita Vist., Foucaux, p. 399.)

The Lalita Vistara ends with this discourse atBenares, and we have from that time no ancientbiography of Buddha; but we have an endlessseries of isolated details of his subsequent history,woven into the various Buddhist works, but allmore or less overlaid with miracles and mytho-logy. He lived for about forty years afterwards,

and seems to have chiefly spent his time at Sra-vasti in Kosala, and Rajagriha in South Behar.The kings of both these places, Prasenajit andBimbisara," protected him. Here the Chinesetravellers found countless monuments, especiallyat Rajagriha, to commemorate various events inhis life; and the Sutras and Avadanas continu-ally link their legends to some spot in this hal-✓

lowed neighbourhood. At Sravasti was the Jeta-vana garden, given to Buddha by the merchantAnatha Pindada, where the scene of the recitalof the Lalita Vistara is laid; and not far fromthe city Hiouen Thsang saw the tower whereBuddha’s aunt Maha Prajapatl was buried. Healso saw the spot, a few miles to the south,where Buddha first met his father again; andthere is a legend of his visit to Kapilavastu,when the Sakya tribe adopted his religion, andhis three principal wives became ascetics. Hisgreatest enemy was his cousin (or, as he issometimes called, his brother-in-law) Devadatta ;and there are many legends which describe hiscontroversies with the Brahmans, and the angerwhich they shewed against the daring innovator.

Later legends add stories of Ms supposed visitsto the Deckan, Ceylon, and even beyond theIndus; but all accounts agree that he died, orentered into nirvana, at Kusinagara, under aShorea robusta, at the age of eighty. General Cun-ningham identifies this place with the ruins nearKasia, thirty-five miles to the east of Gorakh-pur, where one of the mounds is still called the“ fort of the dead prince ” (Anc. Geogr. of India , i.p. 431). His body was burned with all the cere-monies prescribed for an emperor ( chakravartin ),and the ashes were divided into eight portionsfor eight different kingdoms, and each erected achaitya over their portion 0 (Vulva, as given inAs. Researches , xx. pp. 309-317).

n BimbMra was murdered by his son and successorAjfitaSatru, who at first opposed Buddha, but afterwardsembraced his doctrines and was one of the eight sharers ofthe sage's ashes.

o It Is curious that one of the few known incidents ofthe history of the Greek kings of Cabul is that recordedof Menander, that he died in camp and the cities con-tended for his ashes and at last divided his remainsequally among them, and raised monuments to hismemory (Pint. Reip, gerendae praecepta, $ 28). It hasbeen thought that this may be a confusion with theaccount of Buddha, but it seems very improbable. Me-nander appears to have had some special connection withthe Buddhists, as there is a popular book in Ceylon, theMilinda panho, or dialogue between the Buddhist Ndga*