In his preface to the " Dhammapada," Max Müller refers to "the problem, so often started, whether it is possible to distinguish between Buddhism and the personal teaching of Buddha." He argues as follows: "We possess the Buddhist canon, and whatever is found in that canon we have a right to consider as the orthodox Buddhist doctrine. But as there has been no lack of efforts in the Christian theology to distinguish between the doctrine of the founder of our religion and that of the writers of the Gospels; to go beyond the canon of the New Testament, and to make the Aóyia of the Master the only solid rule of faith, so the same want was felt at a very early period among the followers of Buddha. King Asoka, the Indian Constantine, had to remind the assembled priests at at the great

council which had to settle the Buddhist canon that what had been said by Buddha, that alone was well said.'”

"Works attributed to Buddha, but declared to be apocryphal, or even heterodox, existed already at that time (246 B.C.). Thus we are by no means without authority for distinguishing between Buddhism and the teaching of Buddha; the only question is, Whether in our time such a separation is still practicable."

"My belief is," continues Professor Müller, "that, in general, all honest inquirers must oppose a 'No' to this question, and confess that it is useless to try to cast a glance beyond the boundaries of the Buddhist canon. What we find in the canonical books in the socalled 'Three Baskets' is orthodox Buddhism and the doctrine of Buddha, similarly as we must accept in general whatever we find in the Four Gospels as orthodox Christianity and the doctrine of Christ."

This is a most lame and impotent conclusion, and in each case in which an accepted Christian text has been discovered to be the gloss of a commentator, and not found in the earliest manuscripts, and is at the same time manifestly at variance from the doctrine of Christ, Professor Müller's argument can evidently be reduced to an absurdity. Had he said simply the Three Baskets are the accepted scriptures of orthodox Buddhism, the Four Gospels of orthodox Christianity, he would have uttered that which, if a truism, is at least a fact.

It is disappointing to find a distinguished student of comparative religious lore so resigning himself to the abandonment of a difficulty. It must, however, be allowed that western civilisation is still very young in philosophic experience. Doctrinal fetters have long cramped the mind, and prevented its expansion in the ethical direction. Moreover, the leading race of Europe has not long emerged from insular barbarism, and four centuries ago was almost without culture in foreign languages and foreign thought. The time is not long past when, if a few bones of an extinct animal had been placed before a naturalist, and he were asked to reconstruct the whole anatomy upon their basis, he would have smiled with the superior wisdom of ignorance upon his inquirer's absurd folly. Now he will not only build up the pro bable anatomical form, but certainly eliminate from the bones placed before him such as do not consist with the others as having belonged to a creature of a given type.

May we not hope, therefore, that as sympathetic study of ancient. philosophy progresses, the power may be found to grow of distinguishing between characteristic

expressions of thought, as is done with different varieties of bones? And that to body forth the thoughts of a distinctive thinker with more or less fulness and certitude we shall require but to have before us authentic relics known to have proceeded from him.

Professor Müller somewhat fritters away the force of his negative, and, while professing to maintain his stronghold, abandons his separate forts, when he continues as follows in respect to the Buddhist scriptures:

'Still, with regard to certain doctrines and facts, the question, I think, ought to be asked again and again, whether it may not be possible to advance a step further, even with the conviction that we cannot arrive at results of apodictic certainty? If it happens that on certain points we find in different parts of the canon, not only doctrines differing from each other, but plainly contradictory to each other, it follows, surely, that only one of these can have belonged to Buddha personally. In such a case, therefore, I believe we have a right to choose, and I believe we shall be justified in accepting that view as the original one, the one peculiar to Buddha himself, which harmonises least with the later system of orthodox Buddhism."

There is a large amount of force in Professor Müller's concluding suggestion, and we may remark it as curious that he has not carried on his parallelism of Buddhism with Christianity in regard to the applicability of the very searching test he puts forward.

Another Buddhistic student, Mr. D'Alwis, of Ceylon, takes a very different view from that of Professor Max Müller; he urges that "It is indeed possible, according to hints given by Buddha himself, to separate his genuine doctrines from the greater part, if not the

whole, of what has been long accepted as the logia. For example, after a little investigation, we have found no difficulty in expunging the whole of the fable, which goes by the name of Gotama's battle with Mára (Mára himself seems to partake of the nature of the Evil One, Death and Cupid). There is no more mystery in the very logia

of Gotama than in works on other religions. We find no authority for the predictions regarding distinguished persons who lived in after times."

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Mr. D'Alwis says further, "The Three Baskets do not contain entirely the words of Gotama. None of them are free from additions, and the discourses themselves show that they are not without omissions. . . . The formal conclusion of several of the Sútras, which is everywhere identically the same, is essentially the language of the disciples. The Kathá Vatthupakarana, the third book of the Abhidhamma, was added by Moggaliputta Tissou, with the avowed intention of refuting the doctrines in the apocryphal and heterodox works' to which Max Müller refers. . . . Then, again, we have grave doubts as to the genuineness of some of the books ... the language of which, both as regards style and grammar, is different from the undoubted logia of Gotama.. . . Again, there is reason to believe that Ananda, the beloved pupil of Gotama, imported much of his own ideas into the Pari-nibbána Sutta."

The order of the Three Baskets or orthodox Buddhist Scriptures, will throw some light upon the growth of a body of religious doctrine. The three great divisions are Sermons, Ethics, Metaphysics. Can we not, to speak broadly, follow the course of the great prophet, and hear the sermon? walk with the disciples, and be treated to ethics, instead of to the burning heart words of an inspired preacher? remove a little further and come upon the disputatious doctors with their metaphysics?

By what tests can we discover the prophet's own utterances amongst imitations? His mission is humanitarian; his utterances must manifest a human tenderness more markedly than an ethical systematisation. He will at times be exceedingly simple from love of the little ones (intellectually speaking). At times from the difficulty of drawing down heavenly truths into a lower and crasser sphere, he will resort to fable, and will scatter caskets for the wise, parables of enshrined significance, even paradoxes of startling form that live and are not forgotten, by reason as it were, of the very audacity of their conception.

It may be well to repeat here in brief the story of Gautama's life. Legendary in part though it be, it no doubt contains a valuable proportion of fact.

Sakya, or Siddharta, was the son of Raja Suddhodana, of the clan of the Gautamas, who lived at Kapila, near Gorukpur, on the confines of Nepaul and Oude. The date of his birth is not known with absolute certainty, but 623 B.C. is most generally accepted. His mother. Suddhodana's queen, was named Maya. She died seven days after his birth, and the child was brought up by a maternal aunt. The story respecting his birth from the side of a virgin, which is said to have reached

Jerome and to have been repeated by Ratramnus, would seem to be an afterthought of foolish followers; the legend is represented on very early temple sculptures.

A conjecture has been hazarded, from some peculiarities of burial rites and other indications, that the Sakyas, who are unknown in the records of India, were foreigners, and of a Scythian royal family. A short time before the reputed birth of the Muni, the Scythians had poured over Media, Judea, and Asia Minor; and it is considered possible that one branch of these invaders had penetrated at an earlier date into Northern India. It is probable that reference is made to them in the description, "It is a mighty nation, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not, nor understandest thou what they say. Their quiver is as an open sepulchre, they are all warriors :" (Jerem. v. 15-17.)

There is a legend cited from Wassiljew's "Buddhismus," by Schlagintweit in his "Buddhism in Tibet," to the effect that the Sakya tribe had been involved in a disastrous war during the life of the Buddha, and was nearly exterminated, its surviving members being compelled to wander. It is suggested that a son of the race may thus have been led to view existence as the source of pain and sorrow, rather than through the circumstances described in the story presently to be related. But it may be remarked that the effect of a nomad life upon the members of a warlike clan is likely to be rather in the direction of increased hardihood and martial qualities, than in the direction of deep analysis of the problems of existence. A tendency to a contemplative and earnest life, however, the idleness and luxury of a court might by reaction foster in a sensitive nature.

It is said, according to one legend, that on the day of Sakya's birth were born also the daughter of a neighbouring king, Yasodara (who, when the pair had reached their seventeenth year, became his wife), and Ananda, who after the prince became accepted as a Buddha, accompanied him as pupil and friend. If the story be true, the three friends, bound on a mission from the worlds of spirits to assume a human form and to be born in the earth," must have started with a wonderful sympathy of impulse to time their simultaneous arrival here so exactly.

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Sakya-muni, it is said, early distinguished himself by his qualities both intellectual and personal. This statement is probable enough, for an Englishman (the late R. C. Childers), writing nearly twentyfive centuries after the time of the influence of the Buddha, says that "to those who are familiar with the Pali sacred books, nothing is more striking than the intense personality of Gautama."

The Scythians gave to their kings the title of "universal ruler," and were probably known as the lion among nations, if it is of them that the words were said, "The lion is come up from his thicket, and the destroyer of nations has moved his camp." (Jerem. iv. 6.) The legend of Gautama's birth is that the flower (Ficus glomerata) appeared which is fabled to manifest itself whenever one of the order of universal monarchs is born; and that he himself uttered with his "lion voice," "My births are now at an end; I await the unchangable body. I have come and gone for the salvation of all men, but now there is an end; henceforth, there shall be no more birth."

The child grew up to learn all the wisdom of the age, and the chivalric skill and grace of a prince of good family.

Indulged in every delight, the boy nevertheless grew weary of the pomp and pleasures of his father's court.

It appears from the Laws of Manu that it was not unusual in the earliest times of Brahmanism for such as sought a superior life to turn hermits and to live secluded in the forest, engaged in the study of the Vedas, in abstinence, meditation, and prayer. The young prince's preceptors foretold that he would become a recluse. He himself appears to have entertained a larger idea than that of mere seclusion, and to have awakened to the belief that he was to stand forth among his fellowmen in the capacity of a saviour.

To the king it came as a great grief when his son, in the flower of his youth and the splendid worldly promise of his fine faculties of body and mind and his princely accomplishments, began to shew signs of that rare unworldliness that marks the spiritual man.

The youth was no doubt for a long time going through deep experiences, and preparing for the transition that was to withdraw him once and for ever from the career of one of his rank, to a life shared in its externals at least by the mendicant and the anchorite.

He was married and had one child, a son named Rohula. Everything external betokened the likelihood of the usual settling down from the fleeting enthusiasms of youth to the shorter views of average mature life. But the spirit moved him too strenuously for this, and the evils of the world, which the most of us accept as a matter of course, pressed upon the keen sensibilities of the prophetic nature, and forced the youth's heart and brain into some attempt at a solution of the problem of mortal life.

The received account of his own

personal final conversion from the gay routine of a prince's life to the arduous career of a seeker after truth, is no doubt picturesque and artistically composed romance founded on facts.

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Mounted in his chariot, drawn by four white steeds, Prince Sakya was on his way to his pleasure grounds, when his mind became drawn into serious thought by the appearance of a decrepit old man, grey-haired and toothless, tottering feebly along by the aid of a staff. The reflections aroused by this sight were none other than mournful, since man's subjection to decay is evidenced no less in the palace than in the highway, though it may be more nakedly manifest in humble life, where there are no artifices for hiding the ravages of time.

Four months later, Sakya's impressions were deepened by encountering, while on a similar excursion to his pleasure gardens, a poor squalid wretch smitten with the horrible disease of leprosy. He returned again to the palace, only to brood over the fact that man is not only subject to a natural decay of old age, but to loathsome disease as well.

Four months more elapsed, and Sakya met on the same route a corpse being conveyed along by its bearers. He returned with the conviction so heightened that it became as a new and startling revelation; that man, no matter his station, is subject to decay, to disease, and to inevitable death. So came to his mind the sense of the vanity of what is existent, however well disguised by wealth and luxury and the conventional habits of life and modes of regarding it.

Again a period of four months, and he met a calm and cheerful recluse of a pleasant countenance, healthy, well and simply clad in

the robe of those dedicated to religion, of few wants and no devouring anxieties or ambitions.

Here, in an air full of mortality and sorrow, in a state in which pleasures are fleeting, and nothing truly permanent or stable, was a man who seemed to have given up all, and to live in a world from which care was removed.

He pondered the matter. There could be nothing permanent but truth, the absolute eternal law that regulated existence. Let me but discover that, he felt, and I shall know the way of lasting peace for mankind, and become their deliverer.

He decided to go out from his life and never to return to it, until he should have attained to the sight of this divine law of life. So he quitted the palace and his native city, left behind him his wife and child, and, in spite of the opposition of his father, his wife, and his friends, exchanged the position of a prince for that of a mendicant friar. Some would think this an inhuman way of beginning wisdom; but it was done for humanity, and, if he had not made such a complete change in his own life, the enervating influences of the palace (for it was not only father, wife, and child that he was leaving) might have insensibly overpowered the efforts of the young man whose course eventually affected the religious beliefs of half the human race.

So Sakya went forth on his wanderings in search of absolute truth. On his journey he cut off his long hair with the tiara of royalty still attached to it, and donned the three simple garments of the friar, with the begging pot, razor, sewing needle, and bathing cloth, which comprised the appointments of the homeless ascetic.

He was pursuing the orthodox plan of retirement and purification.