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you would also have food to eat.” "O Brahman," replied the Buddha, "I too plough and sow, and having ploughed and sown, I eat." But," said the Brahman, "if you are a husbandman, where are the signs of it? Where are your bullocks, the seed, and the plough." Then the Teacher answered: "Faith is the seed I sow; devotion is the rain that fertilizes it; modesty is the plough-shaft; the mind is the tie of the yoke; mindfulness is my ploughshare and goad. Truthfulness is the means to bind; tenderness, to untie. Energy is my team and bullock. Thus this ploughing is effected, destroying the weeds of delusion. The harvest that it yields is the ambrosia fruit of Nirvana, and by this ploughing all sorrow is brought to an end." Then the Brahman poured milk-rice into a golden bowl and handed it to the Lord saying: “Eat, O Gautama, the milk-rice. Indeed, thou art a husbandman; for thou, Gautama, accomplishest a ploughing, which yields the fruit of immortality." When the Holy One desired to point a moral or convey a reproof, he related an anecdote or a fable treating its characters as representing the previous existences of himself and the other persons concerned. Such anecdotes are known as Jātakas or birth stories. More potent than his word and his method was his wonderful personality. When he talked with men, his lovely voice struck them with rapture and amazement. Could mere words have converted the robber Angulimāla or the cannibal of Alavi? To have once come under his spell is to be his for ever. To meet him is to be penetrated by his love (maitri), and to know him is to love him for ever

In his last preaching tour the Master came to the town of Pāvā, and there in the house of Chunda, a worker in metals, he had his last repast. After this he became ill, and moved to Kusinagara in the eastern part of the Nepalese Terai, where he died at the ripe age of eighty about 477 B. C.*

*The actual cause of the death of the Buddha was, coupled with extreme old age, an attack of dysentery induced by a meal of sukaramaddava Some think that the dish consisted of the succulent parts of a young wild boar, while others suggest that sukara-maddava was an edible fungus or mushroom. One suggestion is that the dish consisted not of boar's flesh, but of sukara kanda, the root of a bulbous plant which is an article of vegetarian diet.

Even in his last moments he received a monk Subhadra, explained to him the Noble Eightfold Path, and converted him to the true faith. His last words to his disciples were: "Decay is inherent in all compound things. Dharmakaya alone is eternal. Seek wisdom and work out your salvation with diligence."

The remains of the Blessed One were burnt by the Mallas of Kusinagara with all the honours and pomp worthy of a king of kings. After cremation the relics were carried to the town-hall, and guarded there for a week covered by a cupola of lances in an enclosure of bows and honoured with garlands, prefumes, music and dances. When Aja tasatru, the king of Magada, heard of the death of the Lord at Kusinagara, he sent an ambassadaor to the Mallas of that place to demand of them a portion of the relics, as he desired to erect a tumulus (stupa) in honor of these relics. The same demand was also made by the Licchavis of Vaisāli, the Sakyas of Kapilavastu, the Bulis of Alahappa, the Koliyas of Rāmagrāma and the Mallas of Pāvā. A Brahman of Vethadvipa also demanded a share on the plea of his being a Brahman. At first the Mallas of Kusinagara were not willing to satisfy these demands, as the Lord attained parinirvāṇa in their territory. But on the advice of the Brahman Drona, who pointed out to the Mallas the indecency of quarrelling over the relics of one who had preached universal brotherhood, the Mallas of Kusinagara changed their mind. Drona was then entrusted with the distribution, and he took for himself the urn, over which he desired to erect a stupa. After the division the Mauryas of Pippalavana sent an envoy for demanding some relics, but they had to content themselves with the charcoal from the funeral pyre. Those that received a share of the relics (dhātu) preserved them in dãgobas (dhathugarbhas) erected in their respective countries. It is said that Emperor Asoka opened these ancient dagobas and distributed the relics contained in them all over his wide empire, and built more than eighty thousand stupas and dāgobas for their preservation.

Such is, freed from the fanciful additions of a pious posterity, the life of the historic Buddha. How much of it is real history, is rather difficult to say. But as to the histor

icity of Gautama Sakyamuni himself there can be no doubt. As Minayeff remarks in his Recherches sur le Buddhisme, it is beyond doubt that grand historical personalities always appear specially at the commencement of great historic movements, and certainly it has been the case in the history of Buddhism, and we cannot doubt that its development also began with the work of a historical personality. There are, however, some orientalists like M. Emil Senart, who, while not altogether denying the existence of the historic Buddha, try to make out that the few historic elements are so much encrusted with mythical outgrowths that it is almost impossible to determine the former with certainty. "It is necessary," says M. E. Senart in his Essai sur la Legende du Buddhu, 'to recognise that, on the whole, excepting a few authentic souvenirs which easily slip through our fingers, the legend of Buddha represents not a real life, nor even a life coloured with fanciful inventions, but it is essentially the poetical glorification of a mythological and divine type that popular veneration has fixed as an aureole on the head of a perfectly human real founder of a sect."

Examining this view of M. Senart in his monograph on Māra und Buddha, Dr. Ernst Windisch writes: "When we consider how long he (Gautama Sakyamuni) lived, how far he travelled, how well-known he must have been to his contemporaries; when we further consider how old certain texts, at least parts of the Vinayapitaka, are, it is certainly not uncritical to regard as historical what seems to be a historical reality. This is more in accordance with the historic method than to regard the simple narrative of the life and events of the time as the transfiguration of a myth into ordinary life. Besides, this process must have been effected in a tolerably short time. For, against M. Senart's assertion that the mythical tendency can be traced back to the earliest days of Buddhism, I venture to point out that in the oldest Buddhist literature we meet with only such tendencies as are generally characteristic of ordinary life, persons and events in which no impartial observer can find any trace of a myth. To the historical events which, according to M. Senart, can have only a mythical meaning, belongs above all the tradition that the Buddha attained the highest wisdom under a

nyagrodha tree." The same scholar notices in passing the view put forward by Dr. H. Kern that the legend may be taken as perfectly true if we regard it as a mythical transformation of astronomical phenomena, and disposes of it with the remark that Dr. Kern's remarkable knowledge of astronomy enables him to see stars twinkling in regions where there is not the smallest ground for any such assumption.

Whatever may be the verdict of historic criticism on the details of the life of Gautama Sākyamuni, there can be no doubt that among the founders of religions he occupies a marked place. His dignified bearing, his high intellectual endowments, his penetrating glance, his oratorical power, the firmness of his convictions, his gentleness, kindness, and liberality, and the attractiveness of his character-all testify to his greatness. "Among heathen precursors of the truth," writes Bishop Milman, “I feel more and more that Sakyamuni is the nearest in character and effect to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life." Similarly, says even Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, who has no end of charges against Buddhism: "Than Buddha there is with the sole exception of the Christ no purer, no more touching figure among the founders of religions. His life is without blemish; he is the finished model of heroism, the self-renunciation, the love, the sweetness he commands." But the impartial philosophic critic finds that Gautama Sakyamuni towers above the founders of all other religions by his life, by his personal character, by the methods of propagandism he employed, and by his final success. Gautama Buddha, though born of an aristocratic and ruling class, lived the life of an ordinary man, discarding the narrow distinctions of caste, rank and wealth. He knew the world. He was son, husband, father, and devoted friend. He was not only a man, but never professed to be anything more than a man. He gave a trial to the creeds of his ancestors, but ultimately made for himself a nobler faith. His teaching was perfect, but never pretended to be a supernatural revelation. He did not doubt the capacity of man to understand the truth. He based all his reasoning on the fact of man's existence, and developed his practical philosophy by the observation and minute study of human nature. In an age innocent of

science he found for the problems of the Whence, the Whither and the Why solutions worthy of a scientific age. His aim was to rescue mankind from the fetters of passion and avarice and to convince them of an ideal higher than mere worldly good. He preached the gospel of renunciation attainable by meditation, a renunciation which did not lead one to the dreamy quietism of pantheistic or nihilistic philosophy but to the purification of one's activity by intellectual and ethical enlightenment so as to bring one to the love of all beings by faith in an eternal Dharmakāya.

Among the world's religious teachers Gautama Sakyamuni alone has the glory of having rightly judged the intrinsic greatness of man's capacity to work out his salvation without extraneous aid. If "the worth of a truly great man consists in his raising the worth of all mankind," who is better entitled to be called truly great than the Blessed One, who, instead of degrading man by placing another being over him, has exalted him to the highest pinnacle of wisdom and love? "It was the genius unequalled among the sons of men that inspired the Buddha's teaching. It was genius commanding in its dictatorial strength that held together his order. It was genius, the first and last that India saw, that in its lofty aims and universality, foreshadowed the possibility of uniting the people into one great nationality, if such had ever been possible." Indeed the Tathāgata is the Light of the World. No wonder that even those who first rejected his teaching had at last to include him in their pantheon by making him an avatār of one of the very gods whom he had himself discarded!

To the unbiassed thinker even the legends which enshroud the life of Sakyasimha are not without significance. They set before him a truly admirable figure: a man of quiet majesty, of wisdom and pleasant humour, consistent in thought, word and deed, of perfect equanimity and moral fervour, exempt from every prejudice, overcoming evil with good, and full of tenderness for all beings. When surrounded by all his retinue of followers, and glorified by the whole world, he never once thought that these privileges were his; but went on doing good, just as the shower brings gladness, yet reflects not on its work. The Burmese relate