ed from the world, the pleasures of which he
had tasted, and of which he had become weary. The spectacle of a
gangrened corpse first arrested his thoughts. Leaving his numerous
wives, he became a religious mendicant. It is said that he walked about
in a shroud, taken from the body of a female slave. Profoundly impressed
with the vanity of all human affairs, he devoted himself to
philosophical meditation, by severe self-denial emancipating himself
from all worldly hopes and cares. When a man has brought himself to this
pass he is able to accomplish great things. For the name by which his
parents had called him he substituted that of Gotama, or "he who kills
the senses," and subsequently Chakia Mouni, or the Penitent of Chakia.
Under the shade of a tree Gotama was born; under the shade of a tree he
overcame the love of the world and the fear of death; under the shade of
a tree he preached his first sermon in the shroud; under the shade of a
tree he died. In four months after he commenced his ministry he had five
disciples; at the close of the year they had increased to twelve
hundred. In the twenty-nine centuries that have passed since that time,
they have given rise to sects counting millions of souls, outnumbering
the followers of all other religious teachers. The system still seems to
retain much of its pristine vigour; yet religions are perishable. There
is no country, except India, which has the same religion now that it had
at the birth of Christ.

[Sidenote: The organization of Buddhism.]

Gotama died at the advanced age of eighty years; his corpse was burnt
eight days subsequently. But several years before this event his system
must be considered as thoroughly established. It shows how little
depends upon the nature of a doctrine, and how much upon effective
organization, that Buddhism, the principles of which are far above the
reach of popular thought, should have been propagated with so much
rapidity, for it made its converts by preaching, and not, like
Mohammedanism, by the sword. Shortly after Gotama's death, a council of
five hundred ecclesiastics assembled for the purpose of settling the
religion. A century later a second council met to regulate the monastic
institution; and in B.C. 241, a third council, for the expulsion of
fire-worshippers. Under the auspices of King Asoka, whose character
presents singular points of resemblance to that of the Roman emperor who
summoned the Council of Nicea, for he, too,