the popular
legends upon which the books of Bishop Bigandet and other European
commentators are based. There are always certain influences coming
upon us from the different quarters of the sky. Sometimes the
influence from one quarter will be best, sometimes that from another
quarter. But the Buddha thought that the perfected man is superior to
all extraneous influences.

[6] The ancient story is that the God Brahma himself implored him
not to withhold the glorious truth.

[7] Brahmanism not being offered to non-Hindus, Buddhism is
consequently, the oldest missionary religion in the world. The early
missionaries endured every hardship, cruelty, and persecution, with
unfaltering courage.

[8] At the Second Council there were two pupils of Ananda,
consequently centenarians, while in Asoka's Council there were pupils
of those pupils.

PART II

THE DHARMA OR DOCTRINE

106. Q. _What is the meaning of the word Buddha?_

A. The enlightened, or he who has the perfect wisdom.

107. Q. _You have said that there were other Buddhas before this one?_

A. Yes; our belief is that, under the operation of eternal causation,
a Buddha takes birth at intervals, when mankind have become plunged
into misery through ignorance, and need the wisdom which it is the
function of a Buddha to teach. (See also Q. 11.)

108. Q. _How is a Buddha developed?_

A. A person, hearing and seeing one of the Buddhas on earth, becomes
seized with the determination so to live that at some future time, when
he shall become fitted for it, he also will be a Buddha for the guiding
of mankind out of the cycle of rebirth.

109. Q. _How does he proceed?_

A. Throughout that birth and every succeeding one, he strives to
subdue his passions, to gain wisdom by experience, and to develop his
higher faculties. He thus grows by degrees wiser, nobler in character,
and stronger in virtue, until, finally, after numberless re-births he
reaches the state when he can become Perfected, Enlightened, All-wise,
the ideal Teacher of the human race.

110. Q. _While this gradual development is going on throughout all
these births, by what name do we call him?_

A. Bodhisat, or Bodhisattva. Thus the Prince Siddhartha Gautama
was a Bodhisattva up to the moment when, under the blessed Bodhi
tree at Gaya, he became Buddha.

111. Q. _Have we any account of his various rebirths as a
Bodhisattva?_

A. In the Jatakatthakatha, a book containi