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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
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descended from their hands to the ground, and looked to the four points, and to the four half points, and above and below; when he looked towards the north he proceeded seven steps in that direction and exclaimed: 'I am the most exalted in the world. I am chief in the world. I am the most excellent in the world. Hereafter there is to me no other birth."" The legend is evidently the same although slightly varied.
Siddhartha, his name as a prince, was educated as a prince, married to different wives, and led a life of pleasure and enjoyment, until the vanity of worldly existence was impressed upon his conviction by his meeting, on three several occasions, with a sick man, a corpse, and a mendicant, on which he resolved to abandon his royalty and devote himself to solitary meditation. His father disapproves of his intention, and places him under restraint; but he makes his escape miraculously by night, with one attendant, and having reached a convenient distance from the city changes his dress with a hunter, - a demigod in disguise,-and with his sword cuts off his own hair. According to a Páli authority quoted by M. Burnouf*, this was the origin of the curly hair of the figures of Sákya, which induced early European writers to consider him as of Abyssinian origin, for the hair, shortened to the length of two fingers, turning upwards, remained in that position the rest of his life. He then engages in sacred study under different Brah
* [Lotus de la bonne Loi, p. 660 ff. 864. Bigandet, 1. 1., p. 519. Bennett, 1. l., p. 23.]
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