w him.

(2) The discovery of places and the remains of buildings mentioned in
the narrative of his time.

(3) The rock-inscriptions, pillars and dagobas made in memory of him by
sovereigns who were near enough to his time to be able to verify the
story of his life.

(4) The unbroken existence of the Sangha which he founded, and their
possession of the facts of his life transmitted from generation to
generation from the beginning.

(5) The fact that in the very year of his death and at various times
subsequently, conventions and councils of the Sangha were held, for the
verification of the actual teachings of the Founder, and the handing
down of those verified teachings from teacher to pupil, to the present
day.

(6) After his cremation his relics were divided among eight kings and a
st[=u]pa was erected over each portion. The portion given to King
Aj[=a]tashatru, and by him covered with a st[=u]pa at R[=a]jagrha, was
taken, less than two centuries later, by the Emperor Asoka and
distributed throughout his Empire. He, of course, had ample means of
knowing whether the relics were those of the Buddha or not, since they
had been in charge of the royal house of Patna from the beginning.

(7) Many of the Buddha's disciples, being Arhats and thus having
control over their vital powers, must have lived to great ages, and
there was nothing to have prevented two or three of them, in succession
to each other, to have covered the whole period between the death of
the Buddha and the reign of Asoka, and thus to have enabled the latter
to get from his contemporary every desired attestation of the fact of
the Buddha's life.[7]

(8) The "Mah[=a]vansa," the best authenticated ancient history known to
us, records the events of Sinhalese history to the reign of King
Vijaya, 543 B.C.--almost the time of the Buddha--and gives most
particulars of his life, as well as those of the Emperor Asoka and all
other sovereigns related to Buddhistic history.

103. Q. _By what names of respect is the Buddha called?_

A. S[=a]kyamuni (the S[=a]kya Sage); S[=a]kya-Simha (the S[=a]kyan
Lion); Sugata (the Happy One); Satthta (the Teacher); Jina (the
Conqueror), Bhagavat (the Blessed One); Lokan[=a]tha (the Lord of the
World); Sarvajna (the Omniscient One); Dharmar[=a]ja (the King of
Truth); Tath[=a]gata (the Great Being), etc.

[1] The word "religion" is most inappropriate to apply to Buddhism
which is not a religion, but a moral philo