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OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY began the long and noble work of spreading among the people a knowledge of the truth which had brought him illumination and freedom. The feeling which prompted him to such active beneficence is very well indicated by a saying which tradition ascribes to him, that he would willingly bear the burden of everybody's suffering if he could thereby bring relief to the world. In this work he met with many difficulties for there were at the time several rival doctrines contending for supremacy; but he persevered in his attempt and in the end achieved extraordinary success. His teaching spread widely in course of time and eventually grew into a world religion. It is, on the whole, one of the most remarkable developments of Indian thought. Its followers are now found in the remotest parts of the Asian continent, and it has been truly remarked that 'for a great n of the Orient,
Christianity has been for the Occident.' Buddha died at a ripe old age. He is one of the greatest figures in the spiritual history of mankind and his life one of the most inspiring in its lessons to humanity.
Buddha wrote no books; and there is a certain amount of vagueness about his teaching, because it has to be gathered from works that were compiled a long time after his death and cannot therefore be regarded as exactly representing what he taught. That the account which these works give is not completely authentic is implied by the following story related in one of them. After the death of Buddha, Purāna, an old disciple, came to Rajagrha and was invited to accept the canon which the other disciples gathering together had meanwhile fixed; but he declined to do so saying that he preferred to hold fast to what he had learnt from the lips of the exalted Master himself. What we say in this chapter, being necessarily based upon such relatively late compilations, should be taken as describing Buddhism in the early stages of its history, and not as setting forth in every particular what Buddha himself taught. There are elements in it which are certainly the result of later thought and
* See Kumārila: Tantra-vārtika, I. iii. 4. * See Oldenberg: Buddha (Eng. Tr.), p. 344.
