From “Linguistic and Oriental Essays.”

SIDDHARTHA was a Rajput, son of the Raja of Kapilavastu, a state small in dimensions, somewhere betwixt Oudh, Gorakpur, and Nepal. His birth was accompanied by miracles, which are striking from their strange resemblance to Gospel story, though the event to which they are attached happened centuries earlier. They are striking also in themselves. We mention one only. Immediately after his birth the child took seven steps to each quarter of the horizon, using the following words: “In all this world I am very chief; from this day forth my births are finished.” Up to the age of twenty-nine he lived a virtuous but an ordinary life, married, and had a son. One day in his drive he encountered an old man, and on inquiry was informed that old age and decrepitude were the lot of all. On a second day he met a man oppressed with disease, and was informed that sickness was the lot of all. On a third day he met a dead body being carried out amidst mourning and lamentation, and was informed that death was the lot of all. Overwhelmed with the sense of the calamities of poor humanity, he returned to his palace, loathing its splendor and comfort, and dwelling on the mutability of human happiness. It is the old sad story, and is told in the different versions of the legends with romantic beauty, and in itself would form the theme of a poet or the saw of a moralist. But he was an actor, not a dreamer. Once again he went forth and met a beggar, serene of countenance, simple in habit, one whom the world had left and who had left the world; who moved free from anger, lust, and sorrow, and in him he recognized the type of his new development.

  He left his father’s house, and for fifty years he wandered about within a restricted circle. After much meditation he became a “Buddha,” or “enlightened,” and founded a new society. His peculiarity was, that he adopted the method of itinerary preaching in the vernacular dialect to all classes, without respect of caste. He admitted the existence of no God, and therefore abolished sacrifice, but instituted the practice of confession. There being no God, there could be no idol or image or priesthood. His followers congregated in monasteries, with the power of leaving at pleasure, and the risk of being expelled for some fault of a moral nature. Each year they itinerated to preach their doctrines; those who were unwilling to enter for the high prize of becoming Buddha could remain in the paths of ordinary life, practicing virtue, and looking for higher things in a future birth. At the age of eighty, in the year 543 B.C., the great master passed away at Kusinagara in Bahar. He died as he lived, conscious of the approach of death, in the midst of his disciples, and his last words were: “No doubt can be found in the mind of a true disciple, beloved; that which causes life causes also decay and death. Never forget this; let your minds be filled with this truth. I called you to make it known to you.” Such dignity in leaving life, as an office filled with honor, for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, will not fear a comparison with that of Socrates or John the Evangelist.

  After his death, councils were held to collect his precepts, and establish his church and propagate it beyond the confines of India. The volumes which contain his doctrines are known as the Tripitaka or three baskets; the first being the Sutra, which contains the doctrinal and practical discourses; the second is the Vinaya, or ecclesiastical discipline; the third is the Abhidharma, or metaphysics and philosophy. We may presume that as fixed by the council they have come down to us, as the entire separation of the Northern and Southern Buddhists has this advantage, that we are able to contrast the documents by critical juxtaposition. While free allusion is made to other of the Brahmanical deities, there is no mention of Krishna, which fixes the period. The foundations of his doctrine have been summed up in the very ancient formula, probably invented by the founder himself, which is called the Four Great Truths. I. Misery always accompanies existence. II. All modes of existence result from passions and desires. III. There is no escape from existence except destruction of desire. IV. This may be accomplished by following the fourfold path to Nirvana. These paths are the following: First comes the awakening of the heart; the second stage is to get rid of impure desires and revengeful feelings; the third and last stage is to get free from evil desires, ignorance, doubt, heresy, unkindliness, and vexation, culminating in universal charity.

  How it came to pass that this passionless, hopeless form of atheistic morality should have touched the heartstrings of one-fifth of the human race is a great mystery; it is as if the Bible consisted of the single book of Ecclesiastes. “Vanity, vanity,” said the preacher; “all is vanity.” And yet the world is a beautiful world, and the faculties of man are capable of goodness and greatness and virtue, and the immortality of the soul seems to be an inherent idea of mankind. Religion, as a great author has written, cannot be without hope. To worship a being, who did not speak to us, love us, recognize us, is not religion: it might be a duty, might be a merit, but man’s instinctive notion of religion is a soul’s response to a God who has taken notice of the soul; it is a loving intercourse or a mere name. At any rate, whatever opinion we may form of this strange system, which has taken such very deep root in the affections of men, there can be no doubt that Buddha stands out as the greatest hero of humanity, and that the more mankind are made acquainted with this exalted type of what the human race can unaided attain to, the better it will be.

  There are strange analogies betwixt Buddhism and its founder and Christianity. We mark the same progress of the human intellect in the total abolition of sacrifices. When Brahmanism recovered its power, the old method of vicarious sacrifice, except in very rare instances, was not renewed; it was felt that this conception had had its day. In Mahometanism it had totally disappeared.