DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.635#0053
40 BENARES, THE SACRED CITY
Hindu philosophy commonly accepted. Finding no
satisfaction in these, he wandered farther, and spent six
weary years with five disciples in the forests near the
Vindhyan mountains, practising the system of self-
torture and starvation which the orthodox school re-
garded as the road to immortality.
Still dissatisfied, he again resumed the ordinary life
of a Bhiksu, whereupon his disciples left him in dis-
gust and went to Benares. He himself wandered on to
the neighbourhood of the present Buddh Gaya. Then
there followed, under the shade of the sacred pippal
tree, known hereafter as the tree of wisdom, the
short period of terrible mental agony which Indian
poets and artists have pictured as his struggle with the
Prince of Evil, Mara, and the wiles of his voluptuous
daughters. Everything he had abandoned of worldly
comfort and delight, his home, a loving wife and child,
wealth, power, and pleasure, seemed to beckon to him
to return. But his spiritual nature triumphed at last,
and he arose, with convictions formed and mind at rest,
to preach those cheerful doctrines of love and content-
ment which changed the entire current of Eastern
thought.
Having thus become the Buddha—the Enlightened
—he started off to Benares '' to establish the kingdom
of righteousness, to give light to those enshrouded in
darkness, and to open the gates of immortality to men".
He rejoined his old disciples in a deer-park, an en-
closure where deer were protected from hunters, and a
favourite retreat for religious devotees, at Isapattana,
the modern Sarnath, 2,% miles to the north of Benares.
He first preached to them the fundamental principles
of his doctrines: the uselessness of bodily penances—
Hindu philosophy commonly accepted. Finding no
satisfaction in these, he wandered farther, and spent six
weary years with five disciples in the forests near the
Vindhyan mountains, practising the system of self-
torture and starvation which the orthodox school re-
garded as the road to immortality.
Still dissatisfied, he again resumed the ordinary life
of a Bhiksu, whereupon his disciples left him in dis-
gust and went to Benares. He himself wandered on to
the neighbourhood of the present Buddh Gaya. Then
there followed, under the shade of the sacred pippal
tree, known hereafter as the tree of wisdom, the
short period of terrible mental agony which Indian
poets and artists have pictured as his struggle with the
Prince of Evil, Mara, and the wiles of his voluptuous
daughters. Everything he had abandoned of worldly
comfort and delight, his home, a loving wife and child,
wealth, power, and pleasure, seemed to beckon to him
to return. But his spiritual nature triumphed at last,
and he arose, with convictions formed and mind at rest,
to preach those cheerful doctrines of love and content-
ment which changed the entire current of Eastern
thought.
Having thus become the Buddha—the Enlightened
—he started off to Benares '' to establish the kingdom
of righteousness, to give light to those enshrouded in
darkness, and to open the gates of immortality to men".
He rejoined his old disciples in a deer-park, an en-
closure where deer were protected from hunters, and a
favourite retreat for religious devotees, at Isapattana,
the modern Sarnath, 2,% miles to the north of Benares.
He first preached to them the fundamental principles
of his doctrines: the uselessness of bodily penances—