1 BUDDHISM IN THE PANJAB. 49
2 just born to him), he escaped by night, eluding the guards who had been
3 placed by his father to watch him. He subjected himself to the severest
4 penances, enduring hunger, thirst, heat, cold and storms; but, having failed,
5 after six years of continual mortification and austerities, to discover the
6 truth, he gave himself up to meditation, and at last conceived that he had
7 arrived at the knowledge necessary to enable a man to disregard the evils
8 that flesh is heir to. In this knowledge were included four sublime truths:
9 pain; the creation of the pain; freedom from pain; and the means of its
10 annihilation, which isthe attainment of eternal bliss, All living creatures,
11 he maintained, were without exception subject to torments and pain. Their
12 knowledge of the existence of evil leads to their striving to liberate them-
13 selves from it. He called himself Buddha, the “enlightened,” and preached
14 the doctrines of his religion to his fellow-creatures. He commenced his
15 public ministry at the age of thirty-six. He used to dress in dingy yellow
16 robes, and, with his head shaved, and a bowl in his hand, like Paul, the
17 great Christian missionary, who traversed the whole length of the Roman
18 Empire, he travelled-about for forty-four years, visiting distant parts of the
19 country and converting peoples and princes. The principal scenes of his
20 life, Ajuddhia, Gaya and Réjgarh, are now places of pilgrimage and the
21 favourite resorts of the followers of his creed. He spent his last night in
22 preaching, and after bidding farewell to his pupils, sank into meditation,
23 and died calmly, at the advanced age of eighty, in a grove and under the
24 shadow of a sal tree, where a bed had been prepared for him by his faithful
25 disciple Ananda. His last words were, “ Nothing continues,” indicating
26 plainly that beyond death there is nothing but extinction and absorption
27 into the Divine Being. His ashes were buried iu Kasia, in the Gorakhpur
28 District, amid a great concourse of mourners,
29 Buddha did away with the ceremonies of the Hindus, set aside the
30 Brahmin priesthood, abolished sacrifices and dethroned the gods of the Indians.
31 He condemned the desires of the flesh and recommended self-torture, with
32 a view to bringing the body into subjection to the spirit. His life-long
33 object was universal propagandism and the reduction of mankind to a state
34 of spiritual thraldom. His religion spread over the whole of India, but, after
35 a hard contest-for fifteen hundred years, it finally gave way to Brahminism,
36 which has outlived its formidable rival. In the abstract, it was atheism,
37 coupled with a system of rigid self-mortifications and penances ; it shunned
38 the very idea of a future state and declared annihilation, or nothingness
39 (nirwdnd), to be the end of present existence. A religion so barren in its
40 results proved distasteful to the lively and imaginative people of India, and
41 was discarded by them. Atheism never was, and never will be, a religion.
42 Yet we find that, banished from its native home, Buddhism, as a religion,
43 has won greater triumphs in its exile, spreading over the whole of further
44 Asia, including Ceylon, Burma, Siam, Japan, China, Cochin China, Mongolia,
45 Manchuria, Thibet and the Eastern Archipelago. It has left a voluminous
46 Llterature in Sanskrit, Chinese, Pali and other languages.
47 Several Chinese pilgrims toiled through Central Asia into India, to visit
48 the birthplace of their religion. The first of these was Fa-Hian who
49 entered the Panjab from Afghanistén, in 399 aD. He found Buddhist
50 monks and temples side by side with Hindu temples. Hieuan Tsiang,
51 another Chinese pilgrim, visited the Panjab, by the Central Asian route, in
52 the first half of the seventh century. He found Buddhist monasteries and
53 monks scattered over the country. In Kashmir, the king and the people
54 were all orthodox Buddhists, and the kingdom of Afghanistan was ruled
55 by a Buddhist king. The monuments of Asoka and Kanishkha, the two
56 _ His great renuncia-
57 tion.
58 His doctrines.
59 His enlightenment.
60 His preachings,
61 His death, 548 Bc.
62 His last words.
63 Buddhist influence
64 on Hinduism.
65 The religion was dis-
66 earded by the Hindus.
67 The Chinese pil-
68 grims in the Panjab,
69 899 and 650 A.D.
70 SriSatguruJagjit Singh JieLibrary _ NamdhariElibraéry@ gmail.com