n. Mara, the great tempter, the spirit
of evil, appears in the sky, urging Gautama to stop. He promises him a
universal kingdom over the four great continents if he will but give up
his enterprise. The tempter does not prevail, but from that time he
followed Gautama as a shadow, hoping to seduce him from that right way.

All night Gautama rode, and at the dawn, when beyond the confines of his
father's domain, dismounts. He cuts off his long hair with his sword,
and sends back all his ornaments and his horse by the faithful
charioteer.

Seven days he spends alone beneath the shade of a mango grove, and then
fares onward to Rajogriha, the capital of Magadha. This town was the
seat of Bimbasara, one of the most powerful princes in the eastern
valley of the Ganges. In the hillside caves near at hand were several
hermits. To one of these Brahman teachers, Alara, Gautama attached
himself, and later to another named Udraka. From these he learned all
that Hindu philosophy could teach.

Still unsatisfied, Gautama next retired to the jungle of Uruvela, on the
most northerly spur of the Viadhya range of mountains, near the present
temple of Buddha Gaya. Here for six years he gave himself up to the
severest penance until he was wasted away to a shadow by fasting and
self-mortification. Such self-control spread his fame "like the sound of
a great bell hung in the skies." But the more he fasted and denied
himself, the more he felt himself a prey to a mental torture worse than
any bodily suffering.

At last one day when walking slowly up and down, lost in thought,
through extreme weakness he staggered and fell to the ground. His
disciples thought he was dead, but he recovered. Despairing of further
profit from such rigorous penance, he began to take regular food and
gave up his self-mortification. At this his disciples forsook him and
went away to Benares. In their opinion mental conquest lay only through
bodily suppression.

There now ensued a second crisis in Gautama's career which culminated in
his withstanding the renewed attacks of the tempter after violent
struggles.

Soon after, if not on the very day when his disciples had left him, he
wandered out toward the banks of the Nairaujara, receiving his morning
meal from the hands of Sujuta, the daughter of a neighboring villager,
and sat down to eat it under the shade of a large tree (_ficus
religiosa_), called from that day the sacred "Bo tree," or tree of
wisdom. He remai