Thus ended the career of a man who was undoubtedly one of the greatest intellectual and moral forces that the world has yet seen, but it is hard to arrive at any certain opinion as to the details of his character and abilities, for in the later accounts he is deified and in the Pitakas though veneration has not gone so far as this, he is ecclesiasticized and the human side is neglected.  The narrative moves like some stately ceremonial in which emotion and incident would be out of place until it reaches the strange deathbed, spread between the flowering trees, and Ananda introduces with the formality of a court chamberlain the Malla householders who have come to pay their last respects and bow down at the feet of the dying teacher.  The scenes described are like stained glass windows; the Lord preaching in the centre, sinners repenting and saints listening, all in harmonious colours and studied postures.  But the central figure remains somewhat aloof; when once he had begun his ministry he laboured uninterruptedly and with continual success, but the foundation of the kingdom of Righteousness seems less like the triumphant issue of a struggle than the passage through the world of some compassionate angel.  This is in great part due to the fact that the Pitakas are works of edification.  True, they set before us the teacher as well as his teaching but they speak of his doings and historical surroundings only in order to provide a proper frame for the law which he preached.  A less devout and more observant historian would have arranged the picture differently and even in the narratives that have come down to us there are touches of human interest which seem authentic.

When the Buddha was dying Ananda wept because he was about to lose so kind a master and the Buddha’s own language to him is even more affectionate.  He cared not only for the organization of the order but for its individual members.  He is frequently represented as feeling that some disciple needed a particular form of instruction and giving it.  Nor did he fail to provide for the comfort of the sick and weary.  For instance a ballad[385] relates how Panthaka driven from his home took refuge at the door of the monastery garden.  “Then came the Lord and stroked my head and taking me by the arm led me into the garden of the monastery and out of kindness he gave me a towel for my feet.”  A striking anecdote[386] relates how he once found a monk who suffered from a disagreeable disease lying on the ground in a filthy state.  So with Ananda’s assistance he washed him and lifting him up with his own hands laid him on his bed.  Then he summoned the brethren and told them that if a sick brother had no special attendant the whole order should wait on him.  “You, monks, have no mothers or fathers to care for you.  If you do not wait one on the other, who is there who will wait on you?  Whosoever would wait on me, he should wait on the sick.”  This last recalls Christ’s words, “Inasmuch