means
of information. But, during the last quarter of a century, so many sources
have been opened, that at present we can easily study it in its original
features and its subsequent development. The sacred books of this religion
have been preserved independently, in Ceylon, Nepaul, China, and Thibet.
Mr. G. Turnour, Mr. Georgely, and Mr. R. Spence Hardy are our chief
authorities in regard to the Pitikas, or the Scriptures in the Pali
language, preserved in Ceylon. Mr. Hodgson has collected and studied the
Sanskrit Scriptures, found in Nepaul. In 1825 he transmitted to the
Asiatic Society in Bengal sixty works in Sanskrit, and two hundred and
fifty in the language of Thibet. M. Csoma, an Hungarian physician,
discovered in the Buddhist monasteries of Thibet an immense collection of
sacred books, which had been translated from the Sanskrit works previously
studied by Mr. Hodgson. In 1829 M. Schmidt found the same works in the
Mongolian. M. Stanislas Julien, an eminent student of the Chinese, has
also translated works on Buddhism from that language, which ascend to the
year 76 of our era.[99] More recently inscriptions cut upon rocks,
columns, and other monuments in Northern India, have been transcribed and
translated. Mr. James Prinsep deciphered these inscriptions, and found
them to be in the ancient language of the province of Magadha where
Buddhism first appeared. They contain the decrees of a king, or raja,
named Pyadasi, whom Mr. Turnour has shown to be the same as the famous
Asoka, before alluded to. This king appears to have come to the throne
somewhere between B.C. 319 and B.C. 260. Similar inscriptions have been
discovered throughout India, proving to the satisfaction of such scholars
as Burnouf, Prinsep, Turnour, Lassen, Weber, Max Muller, and
Saint-Hilaire, that Buddhism had become almost the state religion of
India, in the fourth century before Christ.[100]

Sec. 3. Sakya-muni, the Founder of Buddhism.

North of Central India and of the kingdom of Oude, near the borders of
Nepaul, there reigned, at the end of the seventh century before Christ, a
wise and good king, in his capital city, Kapilavastu[101]. He was one of
the last of the great Solar race, celebrated in the ancient epics of
India. His wife, named _Maya_ because of her great beauty, became the
mother of a prince, who was named Siddartha, and afterward known as the
Buddha[102]. She died seven days after his birth, and the child was
brought up by