as ye have done it unto the least of these brethren, ye have done it unto me.”  And, if his approval of monks being deaf to the claims of family affection seems unfeeling, it should also be mentioned that in the book called Songs of the Nuns[387] women relate how they were crazy at the loss of their children but found complete comfort and peace in his teaching.  Sometimes we are told that when persons whom he wished to convert proved refractory he “suffused them with the feeling of his love” until they yielded to his influence[388].  We can hardly doubt that this somewhat cumbrous phrase preserves a tradition of his personal charm and power.

The beauty of his appearance and the pleasant quality of his voice are often mentioned but in somewhat conventional terms which inspire no confidence that they are based on personal reminiscence, nor have the most ancient images which we possess any claim to represent his features, for the earliest of them are based on Greek models and it was not the custom to represent him by a figure until some centuries after his death.  I can imagine that the truest idea of his person is to be obtained not from the abundant effigies which show him as a somewhat sanctimonious ascetic, but from statues of him as a young man, such as that found at Sarnath, which may possibly preserve not indeed the physiognomy of Gotama but the general physique of a young Nepalese prince, with powerful limbs and features and a determined mouth.  For there is truth at the bottom of the saying that Gotama was born to be either a Buddha or a universal monarch:  he would have made a good general, if he had not become a monk.

We are perhaps on firmer ground when we find speakers in the Pitakas[389] commenting on his calm and bright expression and his unruffled courtesy in discussion.  Of his eloquence it is hard to judge.  The Suttas may preserve his teaching and some of his words but they are probably rearrangements made for recitation.  Still it is impossible to prove that he did not himself adopt this style, particularly when age and iteration had made the use of certain formulae familiar to him.  But though these repetitions and subdivisions of arrangement are often wearisome, there are not wanting traces of another manner, which suggest a terse and racy preacher going straight to the point and driving home his meaning with homely instances.

Humour often peeps through the Buddha’s preaching.  It pervades the Jataka stories, and more than once he is said to have smiled when remembering some previous birth.  Some suttas, such as the tales of the Great King of Glory, and of King Maha Vijita’s sacrifice[390], are simply Jatakas in another form—­interesting stories full of edification for those who can understand but not to be taken as a narrative of facts.  At other times he simply states the ultimate facts of a case and leaves them in their droll incongruity.  Thus when King Ajatasattu was moved and illuminated