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But their constant use among the Buddhists tended, not to bring into clearer vision, but to veil the personality of Gautama, and their constant use as names by modern writers arises simplely from mistake. there seems to be no reason to doubt that Gautama was very early married to his cousin the daughter of the raja of Koliy’ but the next episode in the biographies is probably due to the influences just referred to. Ac- cording to most of the southern accounts, his relations soon after complained in a body to the raja Cuddhodana that his son, devoted to home pleasures, neglected those manly exercises necessary for one who might hereafter have to lead his kinsmen in case of war. Gautama, being told of this, is said to have appointed a day by beat of drum to prove his skill against all comers, and by sur- passing even the cleverest bowmen, and showing his mastery in ‘the twelve arts’, to have won back the good opinion of the complaining clansmen. The Sanskrit ac- counts make this competition take place before his mar- riage, and for the hand of his wife. No reliance can therefore be placed on the actual occurrence of this epi- sode, the rise of the story being easily explicable, as suggested above, by the universal desire to relate won- derful things of the boyhood of men afterwards famous. It is instructive to notice that we find most discrepancies in the accounts of those parts of the story which are most 10 BUDDHISM IN ENGLISH improbable, a consideration which confirms, I think, the authority of those other parts, in themselves not impro- bable, in which all the accounts agree. This is the solitary record of his youth. Uwe hear nothing \more until in his 29h year, Gautama suddenly abandoned his home to devote himself entirely to the study of religion and philosophy. All our authorities agree in the reason they assign for this momentous step. A deity appeared to him in four visions, — under the forms of a man broken down by age, of a sick man, of a decaying corpse, and lastly, of a dignified hermit —the visions appearing only to Gautama and_ his atten lant Channa, who was each time specially inspired — to explain to his deeply moved master the meaning of the sight.) The different versions of this story contain various discrepancies in minor details; and the mere sight of an old or diseased stranger, or even of a dead body, would be insufficient of itself to work so powerful an effect on the mind of one who was not already keenly sensible to the mysteries of sorrow and of death. But we find in this ancient tradition an expression —in- adequate it may be, and even childish —of what in the main we must ourselves believe to be the true explana- tion of the cause which induced Gautama to abandon his family and his home. He was probably not the first—he was certainly not the last— who, in the midst of prosperity and comfort, has felt a yearning and a want which noihing could satisfy, and which have robbed of PRINCE SIDDHARTHA 11 their charm all earthly gains and hopes. This vague dissatisfaction deepens with every fresh proof of the apparent vanity of life, and does not lose but gains in power when, as is reported in the case of Gautama, it arises more from sympathy with the sorrows of others than from any personal sorrow of one’s own. At last, the details of daily life become insupportable; and the calm life of the hermit troubled with none of these things seems a haven of peace, where a life of self-denial and earnest meditation may lead to some solution of the strange enigmas of life. Such feelings must have become more and more ascen- dant in Gautama’s mind, when about ten years after his marriage, his wife bore him their only child, a son named Rahula; and the idea that this new tie might become too strong for him to break, seems to have been the imme- diate cause of his flight. According to the oldest autho- rities of the Southern Buddhists, the birth of his son was announced to him in a garden on the river-side, whither he had gone after seeing the fourth vision,— that of the hermit. The event was not then expected, but he only Said quietly, ‘This is a new and strong tie I shall have to break,’ and returned home thoughtful and sad. But the villagers were delighted at the birth of the child, their raja’s only grandson. Gautama’s return became an ovation, and he entered Kapilavastu amidst a crowd of rejoicing clansmen. Among the sounds of triumph which greeted his ear, one especially 12 BUDDHISM IN ENGLISH is said to have attracted his attention -- A young girl, his cousin, sang a stanza, “Happy the father, happy Ahe mother, happy the wife of such a son and husband.” In the word ‘happy’ lay a double meaning; it meant also ‘freed,’ delivered from the chains of sin and of transmig- tation, saved, Grateful to one who at such a time reminded him of his highest thoughts, he took off his necklace of pearls, and sent it to her, saying, ‘Let this be her fee as a teacher.’ She began to build castles in the air thinking ‘Young Siddhartha is falling in love with me, and has sent me a present,’ but he took no further notice of her, and passed on. “ —TI. W. Rhys Davids, “Buddhism? — CHAPTER IV GREAT ENLIGHTENMENT The problem the prince had before him was how to get rid of old age, disease, and death, which is tanta- mount, from the Hindu standpoint, to the question as to how to be liberated from the necessity of being born again and again. Not a metaphysical but a practical problem. Not actually the question “What is Truth?” but the question, “How to attain Perfection?’ | The Indian philosopher. fundamentally different in this GREAT ENLIGHTENMENT 18 respect from his western colleague, does not and never did want to discover Truth for the sake of Truth, that is to say merely in order to know; but he wanted it solely as a means to liberation. There were many at the time of Buddha, as indeed also previously, who pretended to have solved the problem of Liberation, and all of these solutions apparently belonged to one of three classes: firstly there was that of the orthodox or Vaidikas, who insisted faith in the Vedas and sacrifice was the one path to be followd; secondly there was the belief as old as the Vedas that asceticism, understood as a victory of the mind over the body, was the safest way to perfection; and lastly there was that of the philosophers who asserted that knowledge, z¢., the perfect comprehension of the special philosophical system they severally proclaimed, with or without a certain practice of concentration called Yoga, was essential for the attainment of the highest goal. The first of these three paths had ceased to be fashion- able at the time in which we are interested, or at least in those regions of Northern India with which we are concerned; ;\so the Prince when starting upon his search after truth vacillated between the other two, and actually tried both of them, one after the other, first philosophy and then asceticism. He became successively the disciple of two famous philosophers, living as recluses somewhere in or near the Nepalese Himalaya, named Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta, both of whom taught a variety of the philosophy known as Samkhya-Yoga from the 14 BUDDHISM IN ENGLISH great epic Mahabharata. He succeeded in mastering so completely these two systems that Alara asked him to become his associate, while Uddaka was even prepared to make him the leader of his school. Neither system, however, satisfied our Prince, because in his opinion the liberation taught was incomplete in both cases; the so-called liberated soul was not actually liberated from the limitations of individuality and was deemed to return to worldly existence, although only after an enormous period of rest. He then turned to asceticism, and, knowing that pa- tience was essential here, practised many varieties of it for six long years. Towards the end of this period he lived at Uravela, near Buddhagaya, in the company of five other ascetics, who had recognised his greatness, and had resolved to wait until “the ascentic Gautama,” as he was called, would have reached Enlightenment. But they waited in vain; for, after having reduced his body to almost a skeleton, he fell down one day on the floor unconscious, and he was believed to be dead. He recovered, how- ever, and then the bitter knowledge dawned upon him that he had been on the wrong path for so many years. “Whatever hard austerities there are in the world,” so he is reported to have said to himself, “all those aus- terities I have experienced. And I have not reached that incomparable highest peace. Surely, this is not the right way to Liberation.” So he began again to take regular food, and his companions, believing that he had DEATH OF THE BUDDHA 15 fallen from the ideal, abandoned him and went to Be- nares. He then sat down under a fig-tree (which be- came famous afterward as the Bodhi Tree or Tree of En- lightenment ) and began to reflect deeply. He remember- ed how once in the days of his boyhood, while he was sitting under a tree in the garden of the palace, he attain- ed involuntarily a certain mental state which gave him supreme satisfaction; and suddenly he knew that it was through the Dhydnas or stages of mystical meditation, which he had already practised under his two Samkya- Yoga teachers, that he would reach enlightenment; so he took to the Dhyanas again, and, after having reached the fourth and highest of them, experienced at last what he had sought for so long: the Mahabodhi or Great Enlightenment. —F, O. Schrader,“ Buddhism? — CHAPTER’ V DEATH OF THE BUDDHA Then The Blessed One addressed the venerable Anan- da:— “Let us gohence, Ananda.