this question will ever be
given, one thing has become clear in the light of recent studies,
namely, the fact already shown, that to Brahmanism are due some of the
most marked traits of both the heretical sects. The founder of
Buddhism did not strike out a new system of morals; he was not a
democrat; he did not originate a plot to overthrow the Brahmanic
priesthood; he did not invent the order of monks.[2] There is,
perhaps, no person in history in regard to whom have arisen so many
opinions that are either wholly false or half false.[3]

We shall not canvass in detail views that would be mentioned only to
be rejected. Even the brilliant study of Senart,[4] in which the
figure of Buddha is resolved into a solar type and the history of the
reformer becomes a sun-myth, deserves only to be mentioned and laid
aside. Since the publication of the canonical books of the southern
Buddhists there is no longer any question in regard to the human
reality of the great knight who illumined, albeit with anything but
heavenly light, the darkness of Brahmanical belief. Oldenberg[5] has
taken Senart seriously, and seriously answered him. But Napoleon and
Max Mueller have each been treated as sun-myths, and Senart's essay is
as convincing as either _jeu d'esprit._

In Nep[=a]l, far from the site of Vedic culture, and generations after
the period of the Vedic hymns, was born a son to the noble family of
the C[=a]kyas. A warrior prince, he made at last exclusively his own
the lofty title that was craved by many of his peers, Buddha, the
truly wise, the 'Awakened.'

The C[=a]kyas' land extended along the southern border of Nep[=a]l and
the northeast part of Oude (Oudh), between the Ir[=a]vat[=i] (Rapti)
river on the west and south, and the Rohini on the east; the district
which lies around the present Gorakhpur, about one hundred miles
north-northeast of Benares. The personal history of the later Buddha
is interwoven with legend from which it is not always easy to
disentangle the threads of truth. In the accounts preserved in regard
to the Master, one has first to distinguish the P[=a]li records of the
Southern Buddhists from the Sanskrit tales of the Northerners; and
again, it is necessary to discriminate between the earlier and
later traditions of the Southerners, who have kept in general the
older history as compared with the extravagant tradition preserved in
the Lalita Vistara, the Lotus of the Law, and the other works of the
Nort