atriarch Asvaghosha. This learned ecclesiastic
appears to have travelled about through different districts of India,
patiently collecting the stories and traditions which related to the
life of his master. These he wove into a Sanscrit poem, which three
hundred years later was translated into Chinese, from which version our
present translation is made. There can be no doubt that the author of
the Sanscrit poem was a famous preacher and musician. Originally living
in central India, he seems to have wandered far and wide exercising his
office, and reciting or singing his poem--a sacred epic, more thrilling
to the ears of India than the wrath of Achilles, or the voyages of
Ulysses. We are told that Asvaghosha took a choir of musicians with him,
and many were converted to Buddhism through the combined persuasiveness
of poetry and preaching. The present life of Buddha, although it labors
under the disadvantage of transfusion from Sanscrit into Chinese, and
from Chinese into English, is by no means destitute of poetic color and
aroma. When, for instance, we read of the grief-stricken Yasodhara that
"her breath failed her, and sinking thus she fell upon the dusty
ground," we come upon a stately pathos, worthy of Homer or Lucretius.
And what can be more beautiful than the account of Buddha's conversion
and sudden conviction, that all earthly things were vanity. The verses
once heard linger in the memory so as almost to ring in the ears: "Thus
did he complete the end of self, as fire goes out for want of grass.
Thus he had done what he would have men do: he first had found the way
of perfect knowledge. He finished thus the first great lesson; entering
the great Rishi's house, the darkness disappeared, light burst upon him;
perfectly silent and at rest, he reached the last exhaustless source of
truth; lustrous with all wisdom the great Rishi sat, perfect in gifts,
whilst one convulsive throe shook the wide earth."

E.W.

LIFE OF BUDDHA

CHAPTER I

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 class-com