g, and that all that is related of him is as much a
fiction, as is that of his preceding migrations, and the miracles that
attended his birth, his life, and his departure.' This is going far
beyond Niebuhr, far even beyond Strauss. If an allegorical name had
been invented for the father of Buddha, one more appropriate than
'Clean-food' might surely have been found. His wife is not the only
queen known by the name of Maya, Mayadevi, or Mayavati. Why, if these
names were invented, should his wife have been allowed to keep the
prosaic name of Gopa (cowherdess), and his father-in-law, that of
Da_nd_apa_n_i, 'Stick-hand?' As to his own name, Siddhartha, the
Tibetans maintain that it was given him by his parent, whose wish
(artha) had been fulfilled (siddha), as we hear of Desires and
Dieu-donnes in French. One of the ministers of Da_s_aratha had the
same name. It is possible also that Buddha himself assumed it in after
life, as was the case with many of the Roman surnames. As to the name
of Buddha, no one ever maintained that it was more than a title, the
Enlightened, changed from an appellative into a proper name, just like
the name of Christos, the Anointed, or Mohammed, the Expected.[61]
Kapilavastu would be a most extraordinary compound to express 'the
substance of the Sankhya philosophy.' But all doubt on the subject is
removed by the fact that both Fahian in the fifth, and Hiouen-Thsang
in the seventh centuries, visited the real ruins of that city.

[Footnote 61: See Sprenger, 'Das Leben des Mohammed,' 1861, vol. i. p.
155.]

Making every possible allowance for the accumulation of fiction which
is sure to gather round the life of the founder of every great
religion, we may be satisfied that Buddhism, which changed the aspect
not only of India, but of nearly the whole of Asia, had a real
founder; that he was not a Brahman by birth, but belonged to the
second or royal caste; that being of a meditative turn of mind, and
deeply impressed with the frailty of all created things, he became a
recluse, and sought for light and comfort in the different systems of
Brahman philosophy and theology. Dissatisfied with the artificial
systems of their priests and philosophers, convinced of the
uselessness, nay of the pernicious influence, of their ceremonial
practices and bodily penances, shocked, too, by their worldliness and
pharisaical conceit, which made the priesthood the exclusive property
of one caste and rendered every sincer