Buddha finally yields to the insistence of the god, he who later seems not to admit the existence of the Divinity, and is taken for an atheist. The world, according to the image employed by the poet of Mahavagga, appeared to him a pool full of lotuses, some blue, some white, some above water, others on its surface, the rest at the bottom. The latter represented base sordid souls with whom his preaching would be ineffectual. The lotuses resting on the surface of the water were a figure of souls incapable of saving themselves, but only awaiting a ray of the sunlight truth to emerge and open out in full bloom. The first finally were the intelligences of the elite open before the sunlight. So a third of men were damned in spiteof him, another third were saved without him, and the other third awaited him in order to be able to avoid hell and to attain the felicity of Nirvana.

Buddha cries out: "Let this gate of salvation be open to all! Let him that hath ears hear my word and believe! I thought of my own suffering; this is why, O Brahma, I have not yet revealed the noble word to men.

The god withdrew satisfied.

Buddha experiences no further obstacles; his scruples are dispelled; a new phase of his existence is about to begin-preaching.

His first sermon Buddha gives at Benares. He had for auditorsfive monks who had formerly followed him, at the time he was leading the penitent and mortified life, but who had left him later when he believed he ought to renounce that life of privation and live like the rest of men. They had seen him coming from afar, when after his illumination he turned toward Benares. After a little hesitation they consented to hear him, demanding however how he had been able to attain unto truth leading a comfortable and easy life, sincehe had not found it in the macerations of the most rigorous asceticism. Buddha replied that the truth is precisely in the way which lies equally distant from macerations and voluptuousness. It is the sacred way of eight branches viz. "pure faith, pure will, pure language, pure action, pure means of existence, pure aspirations, pure memory, pure meditation."

Birth, old age, sickness, separation from what one loves, union. with what one does not love, privation of desire; all this is sorrow. In fine sorrow is the five-fold attachment viz. attachment to the five elements which constitute the physical and moral being of man: the body, sensations, representations, formation of tendencies, and.

knowledge. It is the thirst for life that causes rebirth; quench this thirst and we shall be reborn no more.

Knowledge of the fourfold truth-sorrow, its origin, its abolition and the means of abolishing it-this is the essence of Buddha and consequently of Buddhism.

Such is the substance of the famous sermon at Benares. Buddha, according to the consecrated expression, had "turned the wheel of the law" in order to arrest the law of Samsara or of transmigrations. The five monks were converted to the doctrine of Buddha and so became the first disciples of Buddha. They were the sacred Bhikshus, or as it will be pronounced Bhikkhus. Soon the number of neophytes was sixty. The Perfect One sent them out alone to preach the holy truth. He said to them: "O disciples, go forth for the salvation of many, for the happiness of many, through compassion for the world, for goodness, for salvation, for the happiness of gods and men. Go not two in the same way. Preach, O disciples, the doctrine which is glorious in its beginning, glorious in its surroundings, glorious in its end, preach it in its spirit and in its letter, publish the full life, the perfect and pure life, the life of sanctity. There are beings whom the dust of the earth does not blind; but if they do not hear this doctrine preached they cannot attain salvation. They will embrace the doctrine."

This is indeed a program magnificent in appearance, and yet what Buddhism pursues by another way, is, like Brahminism, the destruction of personality. In Brahaminism, however, that destruction consists in the absorption of the individual soul, of Jivatman, of Paramatman or the Supreme Soul, while Buddhism ignores the Supreme Soul, at least it is not occupied with it. It places salvation in Nirvana, the nature of which we shall study later on, but of which we may say here that it is a destruction and not an absorption.

Setting out from Benares, the Perfect One turned his steps toward Ourouvela where lived a thousand ascetics whom he undertook to convert. They had as chiefs the three brothers Kassapa. Buddha first delivered these Muni from an infernal serpent that troubled their sacrifices. The gods themselves came down to hear him, so eloquent was his word! One of the brothers still resisted after all his companions had been converted to the new doctrine. A last conference got the better of his resistance. From Ourouvela Buddha betook himself to Rajagaha, the capital of Magadha, where he was awaited by the king Bimbisara whom he converted without 'difficulty

to his teaching together with all his people. It was at Rajagaha that Oupatissa put to the disciple Assaji his famous questions, and held with him the dialogue mentioned in the inscription of Bairat, engraved at the instance of the Buddhist king Acoka, about 260 B. C. and recently discovered. Oupatissa besought Assaji to sum up the doctrine of his master for him, whereupon Assaji recited this stanza: "Objects result from one cause, the Perfect One teaches this cause and shows how they come to an end."

That speech was a revelation for Oupatissa, who concluded: "All that is subject to birth, is subject also to disappearance." And taking leave of his interlocutor: "Even tho the doctrine of the Masterconfined itself to this you would none the less have attained to the state wherein there is no sorrow, a state unknown for myriads of cycles." Buddhism counted one more adept.

According to previous agreement, the neophyte went in search of a friend named Moggalana and announced to him that he had at last found the truth for which they had each been seeking. Seeing. him afar off Moggalana cried to him: "Friend, thy countenance is serene and thy face pure and clear. Hast thou found deliverance from death?" And Oupatissa answered him joyfully: "Yes, friend, I have found deliverance from death." He then recounted to him his conference with Assaji. Moggalana had his eyes opened in turn and ranged himself under the banner of Buddha. The inhabitants of Magadha complained of the many conversions wrought by Buddha and his disciples especially among the youth. Children quitted their parents to attach themselves to his following. Buddha. stopped their murmurs by converting the malcontents. These primitive traditions for the most part legendary, help us, in the absenceof documents clearly and candidly historical, to form an idea of the way the generations following almost immediately that of Gautama understood the origin of Buddhism and its developments. We have to deal here with peoples of a special temperament, of a spirit at once religious and very philosophical, starving for beliefs and greedy of reasonings, disposed to believe all and yet equally inclined to dispute all. Having thought they recognized the insufficiency of ancient traditions, they embraced with enthusiasm a new doctrine which appeared to answer better their preoccupations and of a nature to dissipate their doubts. The hour of reflection will come when that of infatuation is passed. They will discuss, and consequently will doubt. Buddhism, at least in India, its cradle, will not be

able to endure that crisis of examination, and there will be as much precipitation in abandoning it for the ancient beliefs as there was in deserting them for it. So this almost total disappearance of Hindu Buddhism which seems to have been so rapid, (history telling us nothing but the mere fact), can be explained in large measure, without having. recourse to the hypothesis of persecutions, of which there is no mention, by that dissolving spirit of examination which has always characterized the people of India.

Pursuing this study, we shall see how much modern Buddhism differs from primitive Buddhism, how much that of China and of Japan, for example, differs from that of Mongolia and Thibet, and we shall be led to conclude that this word is like a tent that covers: much merchandise of every sort.

Siddartha was forty years of age when he became Buddha, and his preaching lasted, it is said, the other forty years of his life. Of that preaching of nearly a half century we have an infinite number: of details but very little information that is precise or characteristic. Legend has transformed this last period of the life of the Master, as it has the first, and transmitted, it has been well observed, not. portraits of individuals but purely conventional types, each one of a whole category of personages. The Buddhist is one type, his enemy is another. Going through the life of Buddha as it is described in the most ancient monuments, we see that the figure of the Master detaches itself in bold relief, and it could hardly be otherwise; but it isnot so with its entourage. His disciples, or simply his partisans, were all cast in the same mould, likewise his adversaries. All are alike and when you have met one you know them all. This desolate uniformity is found not only in persons but in their discourses and their acts. They use the same formulae in interrogating the Master, who for his part is at no more expense to his imaginaation. An example which I take from Oldenberg is quite typical.

Buddha is at Rajagaha when a crowd of unqualified persons each one having a diriment impediment, present themselves for minor ordination, Pabbajja. They are about to proceed, not knowing of these defects, when remonstrance is made, attracting the attention of the Master, who decides that the candidate is not admissible in a certain determined case. His decision is law. We pass on to another case of irregularity which is debated and settled in the same fashion. It is a course in canon law dramatized, but all the persons are alike as well as their sayings, and the monotony that perhaps

was sought to be avoided by this process becomes only heavier and more fatiguing, at least for us Europeans who much prefer a regular treatise without all this stage-setting. The Asiatic temperament is not the same as ours, especially the Hindu temperament. What we regard as sobriety would pass as indigence with this people, and what we would call a foolish debauch of the imagination would seem to them quite simple and natural.

Buddha was wont to interrupt his evangelical courses during the rainy season, which lasted three months. He then took refuge as best he could in huts of foliage a little apart from the populace. The day began with meditation, then in the morning the Bhikkhus went begging through the neighboring villages. They presented themselves in silence at each door, dish in hand, and waited for some time. Whether they were given or refused an alms they departed without a word and returned to their hermitage a little before noon to take their repast, which was the principal, even sometimes the only one of the day. After eating they took a siesta which was followed by another meditation interrupted by instructions for the edification of the people from outside who came to visit the Master, or by instructions from himself.

The rainy season over, Buddha quitted his asylum to resume the course of his pious pilgrimages. He was always followed by a troup of faithful, varying according to the estimate of ancient texts, from three hundred to five hundred. His field of action was chiefly the North-East of India, what is now the provinces of Oude and Bihar which formed at that epoch the ancient kingdoms of Kocakas and Magadhas.

Buddha preached in the open air, at the gates of cities and towns or in public gardens and parks, the most famous of which were the Velouvana and the Jetavana, the former graciously given to the Sublime by his friend king Bimbisara, the second bought from Prince Jeta by the rich merchant Anathapindaka. When they heard of his arrival in one of these parks or pleasure-groves which encircled every town of importance, the whole population, headed by the king if it were a royal city, gathered around him, according to tradition, to salute him, to submit their doubts and to hear his exhortations.

Nevertheless all did not accept at once the new doctrine, particularly the Brahmans, up to this the exclusive and undisputed masters of science, and it was in their ranks that Buddha, who it will be remembered belonged to the warrior caste, found his most bitter