denuded the truth still remains as important as it is plain. Priests
of Brahman caste were among the first to adopt Buddhism. The popular
effect of the teaching must have been great, for one reads how, when
Buddha, after this great conversion, begins his victorious wanderings
in Beh[=a]r (M[=a]gadha), he converted so many of the young nobles
that--since conversion led to the immediate result of
renunciation--the people murmured, saying that Gautama (Gotama) was
robbing them of their youth.[17]

From this time on Buddha's life was spent in wandering about and
preaching the new creed mainly to the people of Beh[=a]r and Oude
(K[=a]ci-Kosala, the realm of Benares-Oude), his course extending from
the (Ir[=a]vati) Rapti river in the north to R[=a]jagriha (_gaha,_ now
Rajgir) south of Beh[=a]r, while he spent the _vasso_ or rainy season
in one of the parks, many of which were donated to him by wealthy
members of the fraternity.[18]

Wherever he went he was accompanied with a considerable number of
followers, and one reads of pilgrims from distant places coming to see
and converse with him. The number of his followers appears to have
been somewhat exaggerated by the later writers, since Buddha himself,
when prophesying of the next Buddha, the "Buddha of love" (Maitreya)
says that, whereas he himself has hundreds of followers, the next
Buddha will lead hundreds of thousands.

Although, theoretically, all the castes give up their name, and, when
united in the Buddhistic brotherhood, become "like rivers that give up
their identity and unite in the one ocean," yet were most of the early
recruits, as has been said, from influential and powerful families;
and it is a tenet of Buddhism in regard to the numerous Buddhas, which
have been born[19] and are still to be born on earth, that no Buddha
can be born in a low caste.

The reason for this lies as much as anything in the nature of the
Buddhistic system which is expressly declared to be "for the wise, not
for the foolish." It was not a system based as such on love or on any
democratic sentiment. It was a philosophical exposition of the causal
nexus of birth and freedom from re-birth. The common man, untrained in
logic, might adopt the teaching, but he could not understand it. The
"Congregation of the son of the C[=a]kyas"--such was the earliest name
for the Buddhistic brotherhood--were required only to renounce their
family, put on the yellow robe, assume the tonsure and other o