Gotama, who is represented as the last of the series of Buddhas[1], promulgated a religious system in India which has exercised a wider influence over the Eastern world than the doctrines of any other uninspired teacher in any age or country.[2] He was born B.C. 624 at Kapila-Vastu (a city which has no place in the geography of the Hindus, but which appears to have been on the borders of Nepaul); he attained his superior Buddha-hood B.C. 588, under a bo-tree[3] in the forest of Urawela, the site of the present Buddha Gaya in Bahar; and, at the age of eighty, he died at Kusinara, a doubtful locality, which it has been sought to identify with the widely separated positions of Delhi, Assam, and Cochin China.[4]

[Footnote 1:  There were twenty-four Buddhas previous to the advent of Gotama, who is the fourth in the present Kalpa or chronological period.  His system of doctrine is to endure for 5000 years, when it will be superseded by the appearance and preaching of his successor.—­Rajaratnacari, ch. i. p. 42.]

[Footnote 2:  HARDY’S Eastern Monachism, ch. i. p. 1.  There is evidence of the widely-spread worship of Buddha in the remotely separated individuals with whom it has been sought at various times to identify him.  “Thus it has been attempted to show that Buddha was the same as Thoth of the Egyptians, and Turm of the Etruscans, that he was Mercury, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, the Woden of the Scandinavians, the Manes of the Manichaeans, the prophet Daniel, and even the divine author of Christianity.” (PROFESSOR WILSON, Journ.  Asiat.  Soc., vol. xvi. p. 233.) Another curious illustration of the prevalence of his doctrines may be discovered in the endless variations of his name in the numerous countries over which his influence has extended:  Buddha, Budda, Bud, Bot, Baoth, Buto, Budsdo, Bdho, Pout, Pote, Fo, Fod, Fohi, Fuh, Pet, Pta, Poot, Phthi, Phut, Pht, &c.—­POCOCKE’S India in Greece, appendix, 397.  HARDY’S Buddhism, ch. vii. p. 355.  HARDY in his Eastern Monachism says, “There is no country in either Europe or Asia, except those that are Buddhist, in which the same religion is now professed that was there existent at the time of the Redeemer’s death,” ch. xxii. p. 327.]

[Footnote 3:  The Pippul, Ficus religiosa.]

[Footnote 4:  Professor H.H.  WILSON has identified Kusinara or Kusinagara with Kusia in Gorakhpur, Journ.  Roy.  Asiat.  Soc., vol xvi. p. 246.]

In the course of his ministrations Gotarna is said to have thrice landed in Ceylon.  Prior to his first coming amongst them, the inhabitants of the island appear to have been living in the simplest and most primitive manner, supported on the almost spontaneous products of the soil.  Gotama in person undertook their conversion, and alighted on the first occasion at Bintenne, where there exists to the present day the remains of a monument erected two thousand years ago[1] to commemorate his arrival.  His second visit was to Nagadipo in the north of the island, at a place whose position yet remains to be determined; and the “sacred foot-print” on Adam’s Peak is still worshipped by his devotees as the miraculous evidence of his third and last farewell.