Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstrait561880roya).pdf/242

 I am for the moment confining myself to the region of history, and shall leave the mythological accretions which gathered round the simple facts in later times to be mentioned afterwards.

In due time MAYA was going to her parents' house to be confined, but on the way, under some trees in the pleasant garden of Lumbini, her son, the future Buddha, was unexpectedly born. The mother and child were carried back to SUDDHODANA's palace, and there seven days afterwards MAYA died. The child received the name of SIDDHARTHA. This name became lost afterwards among the many titles of respect that were applied to him, but I follow the example of Dr. LEEMANS in using it of the child while still he remained in his father's house.

One story is told of his youth. When he had arrived at an age to be married, his father proposed to him as a bride his cousin GOPA OF YASODHARA, but a complaint was made by the relations that the young man had entirely devoted himself to home pleasures, to the neglect of learning and of the manly exercises which were so necessary for the leader of his people. Piqued at this complaint, SIDDHARTITA is said to have challenged 500 of the young men of the Sakyas to contend with him in intellectual and athletic exercises, and that he easily proved his superiority in both.

In his twenty-ninth year a circumstance happened which took such a powerful effect upon a mind which was probably already keenly alive to the mysteries of sorrow and death that the current of his life was changed by it. Going out with numerous attendants to take the air in the garden of Lumbini he met a man broken down by age, and was so forcibly impressed with the thought that the pleasure and pride of youth are but a stage on the way to feebleness and decay that he returned to the house reflecting deeply upon what he had seen, and unable to prosecute his scheme of pleasure. On three successive days a similar encounter produced similar results. On the first he net a man in extreme sickness; on the second a corpse; and on the third a dignified hermit. The vanity of life troubled him so deeply, that a longing to leave his home and its short-lived comforts and to devote himself to meditation and self-denial took possession of him. He communicated his resolution to his father, who used every effort to dissuade him from such a step, and surrounded the house with guards to pre-