urvived to our time. He
died a natural death from indigestion at the age of eighty--greatly
venerated by his disciples, and the centre of what had already become a
wide-spread system in a large district of India.

The legends of Buddhism are a very different thing from the brief sketch
which I have given, and which is based upon the earlier Buddhist
literature. These sprang up after Gautama's death, and their growth
extended through many centuries--many centuries even of the Christian
era. The legends divide the life of the Buddha into three periods: 1.
That of his pre-existent states. 2. That part of his life which extended
from his birth to his enlightenment under the Bo-tree. 3. The forty-five
years of his Buddhaship. The legends have no more difficulty in dealing
with the particular experiences of the pre-existent states than in
enriching and adorning the incidents of his earthly life; and both are
doubtless about equally authentic.

Gautama discarded the idea of a divine revelation; he rejected the
authority of the Vedas totally. He denied that he was divine, but
distinctly claimed to be a plain and earnest man. All that he knew, he
had discovered by insight and self-conquest. To assume that he was
pre-existently divine and omniscient subverts the whole theory of his
so-called "discovery," and is at variance with the idea of a personal
conquest. The chief emphasis and force of his teachings lay in the
assumption that he did simply what other men might do; for his mission
was that of a teacher and exempler merely. He was a saviour only in that
he taught men how to save themselves.

The pre-existent states are set forth in the "Jatakas," or Birth Stories
of Ceylon, which represent him as having been born five hundred and
thirty times after he became a Bodisat (a predestined Buddha). As a
specimen of his varied experience while becoming fitted for Buddaship,
we read that he was born eighty-three times as an ascetic, fifty-eight
as a monarch, forty-three as a deva, twenty-four as a Brahman, eighteen
as an ape; as a deer ten, an elephant six, a lion ten; at least once
each as a thief, a gambler, a frog, a hare, a snipe. He was also
embodied in a tree. But as a Bodisat he could not be born in hell, nor
as vermin, nor as a woman! Says Spence Hardy, with a touch of irony: "He
could descend no lower than a snipe."

Northern legends represent Buddha as having "incarnated" for the purpose
of bringing relief to a distresse