EASTERN MONACHISM. I. GOTAMA BUDHA. ABOUT two thousand years before the thunders of Wycliffe were rolled against the mendicant orders of the west, Gótama Budha commenced his career as a mendicant in the east, and established a religious system that has exercised a mightier influence upon the world than the doctrines of any other uninspired teacher, in any age or country. The incidents of his life are to be found in the sacred books of the Budhists, which are called in Páli, the language in which they are written, Pitakattayan, from pitakan, a basket or chest, and tayo, three, the text being divided into three great classes. The instructions contained in the first class, called Winaya, were addressed to the priests; those in the second class, Sútra, to the laity; and those in the third class, Abhidharmma, to the déwas and brahmas of the celestial worlds. There is a commentary, called the Atthakatha, which until recently was regarded as of equal authority with the text. The text was orally preserved until the reign of the Singhalese monarch Wattagamani, who reigned from B. c. 104 to B. c. 76, when it was committed to writing in the island of Ceylon. The commentary was written by Budhagósha, at the ancient city. of Anuradhapura, in Ceylon, A. D. 420. In this interval there was ample space for the invention of the absurd legends that are inserted therein relative to Budha and his immediate disciples, as we may learn from the similar stories that were invented relative to the western saints, in a period less extended. The father of Gótama Budha, Sudhódana, reigned at Kapilawastu, on the borders of Nepaul; and in a garden near that city the future sage was born, B. c. 624. At the moment of his birth he stepped B upon the ground, and after looking around towards the four quarters, the four half-quarters, above, and below, without seeing any one in any of these ten directions who was equal to himself, he exclaimed, "Aggo hamasmi lókassa; jettho hamasmi lókassa; settho hamasmi lókassa; ayamantimájáti; natthidáni punabbhawo; I am the most exalted in the world; I am chief in the world; I am the most excellent in the world; this is my last birth; hereafter there is to me no other existence." Upon his person were certain signs that enabled the soothsayers to foretell that he would become a recluse, preparatory to his reception of the supreme Budhaship. Five days after his birth he received the name of Sidhártta, but he is more commonly known by the name of Sákya or Gótama, both of which are patronymics. When five months old he sat in the air, When sixteen years without any support, at a ploughing festival. of age he was married to Yasodhará, daughter of Suprabudha, who reigned at Kóli. The father of the predicted Budha having heard that it would be by the sight of four signs-decrepitude, sickness, a dead body, and a recluse-he would be induced to abandon the world, commanded that these objects should be kept away from the places to which he usually resorted; but these precautions were all in vain. One day, when proceeding to a garden at some distance from the palace, he saw an old man, whose trembling limbs were supported by a staff. Attracted by the sight, he asked his charioteer if he himself should ever be similarly feeble, and when he was told it was the lot of all men, he returned to the palace disconsolate. Four months afterwards he saw a leper, presenting an appearance utterly loathsome. Again, after the elapse of a similar period he saw a dead body, green with corruption, with worms creeping out of the nine apertures. And a year after the sight of the aged man he saw a recluse proceeding along the road in a manner that indicated the possession of an inward tranquillity; modest in his deportment, his whole appearance was strikingly decorous. Having *The text is almost a literal parallelism to the words of the old ballad. "On looking up, on looking down, She saw a dead man on the ground; And from his nose, unto his chin, The worms crawl'd out, the worms crawl'd in. "Then she unto the parson said, learnt from his charioteer the character of this interesting object, he commanded him to drive on rapidly to the garden, where he remained until sunset, in unbounded magnificence, a vast crowd of attendants ministering to his pleasure, amidst strains of the most animating music. In the course of the day a messenger arrived to announce that the princess had been delivered of a son. This was the last occasion on which he engaged in revelry. On his return to the city, the most beautiful attendants at the palace took up their instruments, upon which they played in their most skilful manner, but the mind of the prince wandered away to other objects; and when they saw that they could not engage his attention they ceased to play, and fell asleep. The altered appearance of the sleeping courtesans excited additional contempt for the pleasures of the world; as some of them began to gnash their teeth, whilst others unwittingly put themselves in unseemly postures, and the garments of all were in disorder, the splendour of the festive hall seemed to have been at once converted into the loathsomeness of a sepulchre. Roused by these appearances, Sidhártta called for his favourite charger, and having first taken a peep at his son from the threshold of the princess's apartment, who was asleep at the time with her arm around the babe, he retired from the city, and when he had arrived at a convenient place assumed the character of a recluse. In the forest of Uruwela he remained six years, passing through a course of ascetic discipline; but as the austerities he practised led to no beneficial result, he reduced his daily allowance of food to a pepperpod, or some equivalent minimum, until his body was greatly attenuated, and one night he fell senseless to the ground from exhaustion. After this he went to another part of the forest, and under a bó-tree, near which Budha Gaya was afterwards built, received the supreme Budhaship. In births innumerable, previous to his present state of existence as a man, he had set the office of a budha before him as the object of his ambition; and in all the various states of existence through which he passed, animal, human and divine, had accomplished some end, or exercised some virtue, that better fitted him for its reception. Whilst under the bó-tree he was attacked by a formidable host of demons; but he remained tranquil, like the star in the midst of the storm, and the demons, when they had exerted their utmost power without effect, passed away like the thunder-cloud retiring from the orb of the moon, causing it to appear in greater |