or hedonist.  The latter school, the C[=a]rv[=a]kas, the so-called disciples of Brihaspati, have, indeed, a philosophy without religion.  They simply say that the gods do not exist, the priests are hypocrites; the Vedas, humbug; and the only thing worth living for, in view of the fact that there are no gods, no heaven, and no soul, is pleasure:  ’While life remains let a man live happily; let him not go without butter (literally ghee) even though he run into debt,’ etc.[1] Of sterner stuff was the man who invented a new religion as a solace for sorrow and a refuge from the nihilism in which he believed.

Whether Jainism or Buddhism be the older heresy, and it is not probable that any definitive answer to this question will ever be given, one thing has become clear in the light of recent studies, namely, the fact already shown, that to Brahmanism are due some of the most marked traits of both the heretical sects.  The founder of Buddhism did not strike out a new system of morals; he was not a democrat; he did not originate a plot to overthrow the Brahmanic priesthood; he did not invent the order of monks.[2] There is, perhaps, no person in history in regard to whom have arisen so many opinions that are either wholly false or half false.[3]

We shall not canvass in detail views that would be mentioned only to be rejected.  Even the brilliant study of Senart,[4] in which the figure of Buddha is resolved into a solar type and the history of the reformer becomes a sun-myth, deserves only to be mentioned and laid aside.  Since the publication of the canonical books of the southern Buddhists there is no longer any question in regard to the human reality of the great knight who illumined, albeit with anything but heavenly light, the darkness of Brahmanical belief.  Oldenberg[5] has taken Senart seriously, and seriously answered him.  But Napoleon and Max Mueller have each been treated as sun-myths, and Senart’s essay is as convincing as either jeu d’esprit.

In Nep[=a]l, far from the site of Vedic culture, and generations after the period of the Vedic hymns, was born a son to the noble family of the C[=a]kyas.  A warrior prince, he made at last exclusively his own the lofty title that was craved by many of his peers, Buddha, the truly wise, the ‘Awakened.’

The C[=a]kyas’ land extended along the southern border of Nep[=a]l and the northeast part of Oude (Oudh), between the Ir[=a]vat[=i] (Rapti) river on the west and south, and the Rohini on the east; the district which lies around the present Gorakhpur, about one hundred miles north-northeast of Benares.  The personal history of the later Buddha is interwoven with legend from which it is not always easy to disentangle the threads of truth.  In the accounts preserved in regard to the Master, one has first to distinguish the P[=a]li records of the Southern Buddhists from the Sanskrit tales of the Northerners; and again, it is necessary to discriminate between the earlier