LATER LEGENDS OF THE LIFE OF GOTAMA,

THE BUDDHA

"In all pagan antiquity, no character has been depicted more noble and more winsome. If the portrait is in advance of the original, it is nevertheless of great value, as setting forth the Buddhist conception of the ideal man."

LATER LEGENDS OF THE LIFE OF BUDDHA

THE

(INTRODUCTION)

HE reader has already been told how the teachings of Buddha spread abroad from India, and how they died out or were trampled out in the country of their birth. Naturally as the story of the great teacher spread from land to land, it gathered fantasies around it, a touch added here, another there, until the first poetic marvels, which we have seen in the Book of the Great Decease, swelled into a thousand grotesque and seemingly absurd extravagances.

The growth of these Buddha legends may best be seen if from the "Decease," the early account of Buddha written in his own home land, we turn to the earliest Chinese account, the "Buddha Charita." This is the accepted life of the sage as known to Chinese Buddhism, and gives the faith as it was carried to China by the great Indian missionary Asvaghosha, about the first Christian century. Or rather, it gives the oldest surviving form of Asvaghosha's teaching, a Chinese translation of his work of about A.D. 400. How much the translator may have expanded the work we have no means of knowing. Critics, however, have generally agreed that this Chinese version of the life has caught the Buddha legend at what was, from a literary viewpoint, the most beautiful moment of its growth. It is rich, full of high sentiment and gentle allegory, the dream of a true poetin brief, one of the most admirable pieces of Asiatic literature.

From this we turn to show a later and far more extravagant development of the tale. This is the noted Burmese "life," which gives the form of Buddhism accepted to-day in Indo-China. The narrative is of uncertain date, perhaps of the fourteenth century, and was translated by the celebrated Burmese scholar and missionary, Bishop Bigandet.

In both of these works the later chapters cover much of the same ground which we have already covered here with the Book of the Great Decease; hence we restrict our volume to the more interesting early chapters, which close with Buddha's winning of his Buddhahood. The brief "birth poem," ascribed to all Buddhas, has been already mentioned.

In the grotesquery of the Burmese life of Gotama we can see how far Buddhism has drifted from the simple, solemn teaching of the "Kingdom of Righteousness." The Buddha had become a myth. It needed the impressive discoveries of recent generations in India to rearouse interest in the perverted faith, and to enable scholars to gather something of the simple truths which had surrounded its origin. Among the rediscovered pillar-edicts of Asoka is one which marks for us the birth-place of the great Gotama, and thus restores him from myth to history.

That birth pillar stands to-day in the extreme north of India, close under the heavy shadow of the Himalayas, miles deep within a tangle of jungle wilderness. A few miles away lie the long deserted ruins of Kapilavastu, the capital of Gotama's tiny kingdom. For perhaps fifteen hundred years the city and all its dependent villages have lain desolate and wholly forgotten. Yet the pillar still stands to preserve for us the site of the little village or garden of Lumbini, the spot where Gotama was born. One should contrast its simple straightforwardness with the miracles of the Burmese "life" and learn how truth forever manages to slip from the grasp of man. Under the touch of that mighty magician Time, truth becomes more elusive than any shadow on the changing waters, more elusive than life itself.

The inscription on the birth pillar reads, “King Piyadasi, beloved of the gods, having been anointed twenty years, came himself and worshiped, saying, 'Here Buddha Sakyamuni was born.' And he caused to be made a stone representing a horse, and he caused this stone pillar to be erected. Because here the Worshiped One was born, the village of Lumbini has been made free of taxes and a recipient of wealth.”

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THE BUDDHA CHARITA

OR

CHINESE LIFE OF BUDDHA

THE BIRTH

There was a descendant of the Ikshvaku family, an invincible Sakya monarch, pure in mind and of unspotted virtue, called therefore Pure-rice, or Suddhodana. Joyously reverenced by all men, as the new moon is welcomed by the world, the king indeed was like the heaven-ruler Sakra, his queen like the divine Saki. Strong and calm of purpose as the earth, pure in mind as the water-lily, her name, figuratively assumed, Maya, she was in truth incapable of classcomparison. On her in likeness as the heavenly queen descended the spirit and entered her womb. A mother, but free from grief or pain, she was without any false or illusory mind. Disliking the clamorous ways of the world, she remembered the excellent garden of Lumbini, a pleasant spot, a quiet forest retreat, with its trickling fountains, and blooming flowers and fruits. Quiet and peaceful, delighting in meditation, respectfully she asked the king for liberty to roam therein; the king, understanding her earnest desire, was seized with a seldom-felt anxiety to grant her request. He commanded his kinsfolk, within and without the palace, to repair with her to that garden shade; and now the queen Maya knew that her time for child-bearing was come. She rested calmly on a beautiful couch, surrounded by a hundred thousand female attendants; it was the eighth day of the fourth moon, a season of serene and agreeable character.

Whilst she thus religiously observed the rules of a pure discipline, Bodhisattva was born from her right side, come to deliver the world, constrained by great pity, without causing his mother pain or anguish. As King Yu-liu was born from the thigh, as King Pi-t'au was born from the hand, as