DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.2371#0036
RELIGIONS. 15
and on mountain peaks, to spend their days apart from tie world
and its vanities, in order to win divine favour or attain to the
power of gods.
The founder of Buddhism was one of these ascetics. Grautama
" the Buddha " was the son of a king of Kapilavastu, a small state
in the north of Oudh, born apparently in the sixth century B.C.
At the age of 29 he forsook his palace with its luxuries, his wife
and infant child, and became a devotee, sometimes associating
with others of the class in their forest abodes in Behar, and
sometimes wandering alone, and, unsatisfied with the dreamy con-
jectures of his teachers, seeking the solution of the mystery of
existence. After some six years of this life, while engaged in a long
and strict fast under a pipal tree near G-aya, wearied by exhaustion
like the North American Indian seers, he fell into a trance, during
which, as he afterwards declared, he attained to Buddhi or " per-
fected knowledge," and issued forth as the Buddha or " enlightened,"
the great teacher of his age. He is called by his followers Sakya
Muni—the Muni or ascetic of the Sakya race ; the Jina, or " van-
quisher " of sins; Sakya Sinha, " the lion of the Sakyas ;" Tatha-
gata, " who came in the same way " as the previous Buddhas, &c.
He celebrated the attainment of the Buddahood in the stanzas—
Through various transmigrations
Have I passed (without discovering)
The builder I seek of the abode (of the passions).
Painful are repeated births !
0 house builder ! I have seen (thee).
No house shalt thou again build me;
Thy rafters are broken,
Thy ridge-pole is shattered,
My mind is freed (from outward objects).
1 have attained the extinction of desires.1
With its dogma of metempsychosis, Vedantism and Brahmanism
provided no final rest, no permanent peace; for to be born again,
even in the highest heaven, was still to be under the empire of the
law of change, and consequently of further suffering in some still
future birth. Hence it had created and fostered the thirst for final
death or annihilation as the only escape from this whirlpool of
1 For Gogerly's version as well as Tumour's, see Spence Hardy's Manual of
Buddhism, pp. 180, 181.
and on mountain peaks, to spend their days apart from tie world
and its vanities, in order to win divine favour or attain to the
power of gods.
The founder of Buddhism was one of these ascetics. Grautama
" the Buddha " was the son of a king of Kapilavastu, a small state
in the north of Oudh, born apparently in the sixth century B.C.
At the age of 29 he forsook his palace with its luxuries, his wife
and infant child, and became a devotee, sometimes associating
with others of the class in their forest abodes in Behar, and
sometimes wandering alone, and, unsatisfied with the dreamy con-
jectures of his teachers, seeking the solution of the mystery of
existence. After some six years of this life, while engaged in a long
and strict fast under a pipal tree near G-aya, wearied by exhaustion
like the North American Indian seers, he fell into a trance, during
which, as he afterwards declared, he attained to Buddhi or " per-
fected knowledge," and issued forth as the Buddha or " enlightened,"
the great teacher of his age. He is called by his followers Sakya
Muni—the Muni or ascetic of the Sakya race ; the Jina, or " van-
quisher " of sins; Sakya Sinha, " the lion of the Sakyas ;" Tatha-
gata, " who came in the same way " as the previous Buddhas, &c.
He celebrated the attainment of the Buddahood in the stanzas—
Through various transmigrations
Have I passed (without discovering)
The builder I seek of the abode (of the passions).
Painful are repeated births !
0 house builder ! I have seen (thee).
No house shalt thou again build me;
Thy rafters are broken,
Thy ridge-pole is shattered,
My mind is freed (from outward objects).
1 have attained the extinction of desires.1
With its dogma of metempsychosis, Vedantism and Brahmanism
provided no final rest, no permanent peace; for to be born again,
even in the highest heaven, was still to be under the empire of the
law of change, and consequently of further suffering in some still
future birth. Hence it had created and fostered the thirst for final
death or annihilation as the only escape from this whirlpool of
1 For Gogerly's version as well as Tumour's, see Spence Hardy's Manual of
Buddhism, pp. 180, 181.