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Rh there converting the three fire-worshiping Brahman hermits who lived in that solitude, he gained Kasyapa, best-bcloved disciple after his cousin Ananda. As a mendicant, begging from door to door, he revisited Kapilavastu and saw again his aged father and his widowed wife, Yasodhara, who adopted the religious life and became the first Buddhist nun. His son, Rahula, demanding his inheritance, was endowed with some of the wisdom acquired by the Buddha beneath the Bo-tree and admitted to the order, and Gautama's half-brother also assumed the mendicant's robe and bowl. For forty-four years after the great struggle beneath the Bo-tree, Buddha taught in the Deer Park at Benares, beneath this sacred Bo-tree at Uruwela, or in the Bamboo Grove at Rajagriha during the rainy season; and for the rest of the year wandered through Magadha, preaching the religion that has held sway over a great part of Asia for twenty-five centuries, and in corrupt form now holds more adherents than any other faith. Preaching the equality of men, he yet attracted disciples of high birth and station; and with no praises or reverence for women, voicing only the bitterest accusations and charges against the whole sex, women flocked to his teachings, and he established unwillingly, after much hesitation, the crowded orders of female mendicants.

After these forty-four years of active proselytism and conversion, he announced that he was about to die. He was then in his eightieth year; and while begging his way toward Kapilavastu, he ate of some rice and young pork given him in his begging-bowl,