much to do with the gods—­descend from heaven to hear him, and other marvels take place.  The Brahmans are all converted.  The miracles and the numbers may be stripped off, but thus denuded the truth still remains as important as it is plain.  Priests of Brahman caste were among the first to adopt Buddhism.  The popular effect of the teaching must have been great, for one reads how, when Buddha, after this great conversion, begins his victorious wanderings in Beh[=a]r (M[=a]gadha), he converted so many of the young nobles that—­since conversion led to the immediate result of renunciation—­the people murmured, saying that Gautama (Gotama) was robbing them of their youth.[17]

From this time on Buddha’s life was spent in wandering about and preaching the new creed mainly to the people of Beh[=a]r and Oude (K[=a]ci-Kosala, the realm of Benares-Oude), his course extending from the (Ir[=a]vati) Rapti river in the north to R[=a]jagriha (gaha, now Rajgir) south of Beh[=a]r, while he spent the vasso or rainy season in one of the parks, many of which were donated to him by wealthy members of the fraternity.[18]

Wherever he went he was accompanied with a considerable number of followers, and one reads of pilgrims from distant places coming to see and converse with him.  The number of his followers appears to have been somewhat exaggerated by the later writers, since Buddha himself, when prophesying of the next Buddha, the “Buddha of love” (Maitreya) says that, whereas he himself has hundreds of followers, the next Buddha will lead hundreds of thousands.

Although, theoretically, all the castes give up their name, and, when united in the Buddhistic brotherhood, become “like rivers that give up their identity and unite in the one ocean,” yet were most of the early recruits, as has been said, from influential and powerful families; and it is a tenet of Buddhism in regard to the numerous Buddhas, which have been born[19] and are still to be born on earth, that no Buddha can be born in a low caste.

The reason for this lies as much as anything in the nature of the Buddhistic system which is expressly declared to be “for the wise, not for the foolish.”  It was not a system based as such on love or on any democratic sentiment.  It was a philosophical exposition of the causal nexus of birth and freedom from re-birth.  The common man, untrained in logic, might adopt the teaching, but he could not understand it.  The “Congregation of the son of the C[=a]kyas”—­such was the earliest name for the Buddhistic brotherhood—­were required only to renounce their family, put on the yellow robe, assume the tonsure and other outward signs, and be chaste and high-minded.  But the teachers were instructed in the subtleties of the ‘Path,’ and it needed no little training to follow the leader’s thought to its logical conclusion.