ttachees aux cinq
desirs--Elles les aiment comme le Yak aime sa queue. Par la
concupiscence et l'amour, elles s'aveuglent elles-memes,
etc.'
]

The whole work is written in a similar style, and where fact and
legend, prose and poetry, sense and nonsense, are so mixed together,
the plan adopted by M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, of making two lives
out of one, the one containing all that seems possible, the other what
seems impossible, would naturally recommend itself. It is not a safe
process, however, to distil history out of legend by simply straining
the legendary through the sieve of physical possibility. Many things
are possible, and may yet be the mere inventions of later writers, and
many things which sound impossible have been reclaimed as historical,
after removing from them the thin film of mythological phraseology. We
believe that the only use which the historian can safely make of the
Lalita-Vistara, is to employ it, not as evidence of facts which
actually happened, but in illustration of the popular belief prevalent
at the time when it was committed to writing. Without therefore
adopting the division of fact and fiction in the life of Buddha, as
attempted by M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, we yet believe that in order
to avoid a repetition of childish absurdities, we shall best consult
the interest of our readers if we follow his example, and give a short
and rational abstract of the life of Buddha as handed down by
tradition, and committed to writing not later than the first century
B.C.

Buddha, or more correctly, the Buddha,--for Buddha is an appellative
meaning Enlightened,--was born at Kapilavastu, the capital of a kingdom of
the same name, situated at the foot of the mountains of Nepal, north of the
present Oude. His father, the king of Kapilavastu, was of the family of the
_S_akyas, and belonged to the clan of the Gautamas. His mother was
Mayadevi, daughter of king Suprabuddha, and need we say that she was as
beautiful as he was powerful and just? Buddha was therefore by birth of the
Kshatriya or warrior caste, and he took the name of _S_akya from his
family, and that of Gautama from his clan, claiming a kind of spiritual
relationship with the honoured race of Gautama. The name of Buddha, or the
Buddha, dates from a later period of his life, and so probably does the
name Siddhartha (he whose objects have been accomplished), though we are
told that it was given him in his childhood. His mo