DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.614#0048
' 32 BENARES, PAST AND PRESENT.
towns, and to other and distant lands, which, ter-
minated in the conversion to the Buddhist creed of
the vast and densely-peopled countries of Eastern Asia.
When the immense influence which he has exerted
upon mankind is considered, it may he safely affirmed
that the career of S akya Muni or Buddha is unparalleled
in mere human history. That he, a solitary man, prince of
a royal house, hecoming an ascetic, and, seating himself
down under a tree, should have remained there in medita-
tion for five years and upwards, pondering over the religion,
the priestcraft, false dogmas, loose morality, uncertainty,
douht, and confusion of his times, under which the
nation groaned; that he should have come to the con-
clusion that the existing religion was a delusion, baseless
and pernicious ; that he should have devised an entirely
new system, of which himself was the centre, should
have thought it out and put it in order, so as to be able
to meet objectors and to overcome their arguments;
that, at the expiration of this period, he should have
risen up and journeyed to Benares, and there delivered
his primary discourse respecting the new doctrine ;
should have thence gone forth to the gradual conquest
of India, until the whole land substantially became
converted to Buddhism, and sent forth missionaries to
Ceylon and other parts, by whose agency that island,
the empire of China, Japan, Burmah, Nepal, and
Tibet, with their four or five hundred millions of
people, received the extraordinary dogma, the gigantic
blasphemy, that there was no separate, self-existent
Supreme God, but that each individual man, by con-
templation, could rise into the divinity; that all this
towns, and to other and distant lands, which, ter-
minated in the conversion to the Buddhist creed of
the vast and densely-peopled countries of Eastern Asia.
When the immense influence which he has exerted
upon mankind is considered, it may he safely affirmed
that the career of S akya Muni or Buddha is unparalleled
in mere human history. That he, a solitary man, prince of
a royal house, hecoming an ascetic, and, seating himself
down under a tree, should have remained there in medita-
tion for five years and upwards, pondering over the religion,
the priestcraft, false dogmas, loose morality, uncertainty,
douht, and confusion of his times, under which the
nation groaned; that he should have come to the con-
clusion that the existing religion was a delusion, baseless
and pernicious ; that he should have devised an entirely
new system, of which himself was the centre, should
have thought it out and put it in order, so as to be able
to meet objectors and to overcome their arguments;
that, at the expiration of this period, he should have
risen up and journeyed to Benares, and there delivered
his primary discourse respecting the new doctrine ;
should have thence gone forth to the gradual conquest
of India, until the whole land substantially became
converted to Buddhism, and sent forth missionaries to
Ceylon and other parts, by whose agency that island,
the empire of China, Japan, Burmah, Nepal, and
Tibet, with their four or five hundred millions of
people, received the extraordinary dogma, the gigantic
blasphemy, that there was no separate, self-existent
Supreme God, but that each individual man, by con-
templation, could rise into the divinity; that all this