m to the tournament or _mela_.

25. Q. _How, amid all this luxury, could a Prince become all-wise?_

A. He had such natural wisdom that when but a child he seemed to
understand all arts and sciences almost without study. He had the best
teachers, but they could teach him nothing that he did not seem to
comprehend immediately.

26. Q. _Did he become Buddha in his splendid palaces?_

A. No. He left all and went alone into the jungle.

27. Q. _Why did he do this?_

A. To discover the cause of our sufferings and the way to escape from
them.

28. Q. _Was it not selfishness that made him do this?_

A. No; it was boundless love for all beings that made him devote
himself to their good.

29. Q. _But how did he acquire this boundless love?_

A. Throughout numberless births and aeons of years he had been
cultivating this love, with the unfaltering determination to become a
Buddha.

30. Q. _What did he this time relinquish?_

A. His beautiful palaces, his riches, luxuries and pleasures, his soft
beds, fine dresses, rich food, and his kingdom; he even left his
beloved wife and only son, R[=a]hula.

31. Q. _Did any other man ever sacrifice so much for our sake?_

A. Not one in this present world-period: this is why Buddhists so love
him, and why good Buddhists try to be like him.

32. Q. _But have not many men given up all earthly blessings, and
even life itself, for the sake of their fellow-men?_

A. Certainly. But we believe that this surpassing unselfishness and
love for humanity showed themselves in his renouncing the bliss of
Nirv[=a]na countless ages ago, when he was born as the Br[=a]hmana
Sumedha, in the time of D[=i]p[=a]nkara Buddha: he had then reached the
stage where he might have entered Nirv[=a]na, had he not loved mankind
more than himself. This renunciation implied his voluntarily enduring
the miseries of earthly lives until he became Buddha, for the sake of
teaching all beings the way to emancipation and to give rest to the
world.

33. Q. _How old was he when he went to the jungle?_

A. He was in his twenty-ninth year.

34. Q. _What finally determined him to leave all that men usually
love so much and go to the jungle?_

A. A _Deva_[2] appeared to him when driving out in his chariot, under
four impressive forms, on four different occasions.

35. Q. _What were these different forms?_

A. Those of a very old man broken down by age, of a sick man, of a
d