is past, and only
intestine quarrels and local strife have succeeded. The age of creative
literature is over, and commentators, critics and grammarians have
succeeded. Still more startling are the facts disclosed by literary
history. The liquid poetry has become frozen prose; the old flaming fuel
of genius is now slag and ashes. We see Hindus doing exactly what Jewish
rabbis, and after them Christian schoolmen and dogma-makers, did with
the old Hebrew poems and prophecies. Construing literally the prayers,
songs and hopes of an earlier age, they rebuild the letter of the text
into creeds and systems, and erect an amazing edifice of steel-framed
and stone-cased tradition, to challenge which is taught to be heresy and
impiety. The poetical similes used in the Rig Vedas have been
transformed into mythological tales. In the change of language the Vedas
themselves are unreadable, except by the priests, who fatten on popular
beliefs in the transmigration of souls and in the power of priestcraft
to make that transmigration blissful--provided liberal gifts are duly
forthcoming. Idolatry and witchcraft are rampant. Some saviour, some
light was needed.

Buddhism a Logical Product of Hindu Thought.

At such a time, probably 557 B.C., was born Shaka, of the Muni clan, at
Kapilavastu, one hundred miles northeast of Benares. We pass over the
details[7] of the life of him called Prince, Lord, Lion of the Tribe of
Shaka, and Saviour; of his desertion of wife and child, called the first
Great Renunciation; of his struggles to obtain peace; of his
enlightenment or Buddhahood; of his second or Greater Renunciation; of
merit on account of austerities; and give the story told in a mountain
of books in various tongues, but condensed in a paragraph by Romesh
Chunder Dutt.

"At an early age, Prince Gautama left his royal home, and his
wife, and new-born child, and became a wanderer and a mendicant,
to seek a way of salvation for man. Hindu rites, accompanied by
the slaughter of innocent victims, repelled his feelings. Hindu
philosophy afforded him no remedy, and Hindu penances and
mortifications proved unavailing after he had practised them for
years. At last, by severe contemplation, he discovered the long
coveted truth; a holy and calm life, and benevolence and love
toward all living creatures seemed to him the essence of
religion. Self-culture and universal love--this was his
discovery--t