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120 and died that night beneath a bo-tree in a grove near Kusinagara—543, if we accept the older Pali or Cingalese records of the southern Buddhists, 400 , or 478 , according to the Sanskrit records. Then all nature mourned, and the Bo-tree, for the only time, shed its leaves. His remains were cremated on the spot where he died, and a great stupa raised by the Sakya clan over the one-eighth portion of the ashes and relics allotted them. The rest of the relics were distributed to seven centers of his doctrinal teachings, where similar monuments were raised. Excavations at Buddha-Gaya, Bhattiprolu, and Piprawah have yielded relic-caskets containing these undoubted fragments of the body of Buddha, accompanied in every instance by stores of pearls and precious stones, gold-leaf ornaments in the form of swastikas, seals, and inscribed tablets. The soapstone, crystal, and beryl vases and cylinders containing these relics are admirable pieces of workmanship, but the only inscriptions dating from Gautama's lifetime now visible are those from the Piprawah mound, housed in the India Museum at Calcutta.

The doctrines were preserved in oral versions, which were correctly chanted for months at a time by the priests participating in the First and Second Councils, held one hundred and two hundred years after his death. At the Third Council, called by the emperor Asoka in 244, a first record of the Orthodox Canon was written on palm leaves in Pali, the language of Magadha. A fourth council of Buddhists was held by the Scythian king Ka-