SKETCHES OF LONELY CHARACTERS. BUDDHA. ABOUT Six centuries before the beginning of the Christion era, in Kapilavastu, a royal city of India, the Prince Gotama, or Sakya Muni, was born in the palace of King Suddhodarna, lord paramount of the Aryan race. Heir to the regal glories of the house of the sun, brought up in a powerful and splendid court, amidst the utmost richness and refinement of poetic and metaphysical culture, he was profusely supplied with all that could gratify the senses or develop the mind. He was endowed with surpassing personal beauty and with the noblest traits of character. At an early age he showed such extreme thoughtfulness and sympathy that his teachers foretold his destiny to become a recluse. The king took every precaution to prevent this catastrophe. But in vain. Fate would be fulfilled. One day, while riding out, he saw a decrepit old man, half bent to the earth, tottering along with great difficulty. Learning, on inquiry, that all men who lived to a great age were subject to these infirmities, the prince sorrowfully meditated for a long time. After an interval he met a beggar suffering from a loathsome disease. This spectacle of sores and pains brought his former reflections back in double intensity. And when, a few months later, he happened to behold a dead body in the last stages of decay, and was told that this was the unavoidable end of all men, he was horrified at the evils of existence. keenest sense of the vanity of worldly pleasure and magnificence took possession of him. Melancholy contemplations on the ghastly circle of birth, growth, decline, The disease, death, corruption, constantly occupied his soul. But at length, in one of his excursions beyond the palace, he saw a hermit, becomingly clad in a simple robe, walking cheerfully along the road with a staff and almsdish, in perfect health, with a serene and smiling face. The prince asked who this was. And being told that it was a recluse, who by religious withdrawal and meditation had freed himself from the cares and miseries of ordinary mortals, he at once matured his previous ruminations in an indomitable resolution to imitate the example thus set, detach himself from bondage to the disgusts of human existence which the gorgeous masks of his station had vainly hidden, and try to discover the means of eternally delivering himself and all men. With transcendent strength of self-denial he fulfilled his purpose on the very day of the birth of his first child, when the whole palace and city were ringing with festivities. Pausing on the threshold of the room where the sleeping mother and babe lay in their loveliness, he gazed on them a moment, then turned away, forsook without a sigh the most seductive prizes of the world, and, accompanied by a single servant, whom he soon dismissed, started for a desolate forest, far from all the attractions and distractions of his former experience. What a picture it is of spiritual prowess, a peerless personality, a divine consecration, and an inexpressible mental loneliness, the musing Gotama, only twenty-nine years old, in the fragrant bloom of his royalty, after the three sad sights of helpless age, repulsive sickness, and putrescent death, and the pleasant sight of the happy ascetic, -stealing away from queen and child and palace, exchanging the diadem and golden robe for the alms-bowl and clout, and sitting down under the bo-tree in the deep woods to think out the doctrine of salvation! For six long years Gotama persevered, in strict seclusion from the world, in the practice of all known austerities for reducing the flesh to its lowest influence, and arts for raising the mind to its grandest power, constantly striving to vanquish every selfish desire, every earthly attachment, and achieve a knowledge of truth. Astounding descriptions are given of the penances he underwent, the agonies he endured, the temptations he withstood, the repeated failures he experienced before his final victory. His figure, the authority he acquired, and the part he played in subsequent history became so prodigious, and the imaginative fertility and credulity of the Asiatic races were so teeming and unchecked, that it would have been unnatural if he had not been surrounded with a glittering cloud of supernatural attributes and feats, if he had not been obscured under masses of fictitious marvels. The deifying wonder that has wrought on the biography of Jesus, the collective miracles ascribed to him, are the merest trifle in comparison with the overwhelming powers attributed to Buddha. One consequence is a common doubt whether there really ever was such a person. But the doubt is not valid. The soundest historical criticism must admit that the prince and sage, Gotama Buddha, once lived, and that we possess, enveloped in stupendous perversions and exaggerations, a trustworthy knowledge of his life, character, doctrine, and influence. Stripping off the mythical accretion, we discern, under the distortions of the miraculous, the unmistakable indications of the natural and the true. Behind the grotesque exaggerations of the legendary monstrosity, we trace the affecting features of a genius and hero of the most exalted order. Casting away the sceptre and laurel, retreating into the solitude of the wilderness, year after year Gotama maintained his pursuit of a perfect insight and emancipation, determined never to falter till he had solved the problem of existence. He had grown up in a country and age where innumerable rival sects, both in philosophy and religion, lived side by side, with universal tolerance, but engaged in keen debate. Hindu faith and metaphysics, represented by masters whose comprehensiveness and subtility of thinking have scarcely been surpassed, included every form of speculative opinion, both sceptical and dogmatic, dualistic and monistic,-polytheism, monotheism, atheism, pantheism, sensualism, subjective ideal. ism, objective idealism, absolute idealism, nihilism. No fineness, no stretch, no complexity of dialecties was unOF TTX LI |