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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
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which Śákya displays in his youth he pierces with his arrow an iron effigy of a boar, the very feat which Arjuna performs, only that the Pandu prince achieves it within the reasonable compass of a meadow, whilst, in the usual strain of Buddhist exaggeration, Sákya hits the mark at the distance of ten kos, or twenty miles off*: these circumstances clearly refer to the Hindu poem, and concur in placing the age of the Lalita Vistara about a century and a half before the Christian era. It embodies, however, no doubt, the traditions of an earlier date, traditions not long subsequent to the first dissemination of the principles of Buddhism.
The circumstances of Buddha's life, as told in the Lalita Vistara, have furnished all the Buddhist nations with their traditions. The life and acts of Buddha are always related to the same purport, and very nearly in the same words, in Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian, Páli, Burman, Siamese, and Singhalese. After an infinitude of births in various characters, during ten millions of millions and one hundred thousand millions of kalpas, the shortest of which consists of sixteen millions of years, and the longest of thirty-two millions, he attained the rank of Bodhisattwa, that which is inferior only to a Buddha, in the Tushita heaven, where he taught his doctrine to innumerable millions of Bodhisattwas, or future Buddhas, and gods and spirits; and was glorified by Sakra, Brahmá, Maheswara, Nágas, Gandharbas, Yakshas, Asuras,
* [1. l., p. 175 f.]
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