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LIFE OF BUDDHA. of Buddha dating from the same age as the early Pali texts. Such information as they do contain is rather in an incidental and unconnected form; but this does not cause us to doubt his having existed and been a religious leader, for at that early period and among that people the idea of composing a biography of a man had not arisen; and all the ancient Hindu books are destitute of any specimen of an attempt at even a brief biography of a man. But the existence of numerous Buddhist sacred
Buddhist books, the composition of which almost cersacred books. tainly took place before the council of the seven hundred fathers met at Vesali in the fourth century B.C., together with the nature of their contents, suffices to assure us that they represent the teaching of a great teacher, the Buddha, who preached salvation and deliverance to the people, and was in rivalry or opposition to six other heads of sects, of whom one, Nataputta, founded the Jain system, often represented as an offshoot of Buddhism, though it is rather a representative of similar tendencies acting at the same time. “It is evident,'' says Prof. Oldenberg, “that Buddha was a head of a monastic order of the very same type as that to which Nataputta belonged; that he journeyed from town to town in the garb and with all the external circumstances of an ascetic, taught and gathered round himself a band of disciples, to whom he gave simple ordinances.” The form in which details concerning him have been preserved is chiefly his discourses and teaching, sometimes doubtfully associated with the name of the place where they were uttered; and in addition to this the main events of his life are frequently referred to.
The native land of Buddha was situated between the lower Himalayas of Nepal and the middle course of the The native river Rapti, in the north-east of Oudh. The land of little river Rohim, which joins the Rapti near
Buddha. Goruckpore, about 100 miles north of Benares, is its eastern boundary. Both the Rohim and the Rapti appear by the same names in early Buddhist literature. In this fertile region, liable to heavy rains and long-lying inundations, the Aryan tribe or people of the Sakyas
