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Going north from here less than a yojana, they came to a town which had been the birthplace of Kanakamuni Buddha. At the place where he and his father met, and where he attained to pari-nirvâna, topes were erected. ~Legends of Buddha's Birth~ Less than a yojana to the east from this brought them to the city of Kapilavastu; but in it there was neither king nor people. All was mound and desolation.

In the sixth century before Christ, an Aryan tribe named Sakya dwelt in Kapilavastu, 120 miles north of Benares. The king of the country had a son, Siddharta, gifted with supernatural powers both of body and mind.

He found the country in which are the sacred sites of Śrâvasti, Kapilavastu and Kusinârâ sparsely inhabited and desolate, but this seems to have been due to general causes, not specially to the decay of religion.

Less than a yojana to the east from this brought them to the city of Kapilavastu; but in it there was neither king nor people. All was mound and desolation. Of inhabitants there were only some monks and a score or two of families of the common people. A tope was erected at this last place, which is still existing.

The people of Kapilavastu, and all the country afflicted with grief; your father, now an old man, mindful of his son, loving him moreover tenderly; surely this determination to leave your home, this is not according to duty; it is wrong, surely, to disregard father and mother we cannot speak of such a thing with propriety!

There I shall meet one of the pure faith in a Jain temple of that city. He also is a Seeker in secret, and from him haply I may learn. Maybe he will go with me to Buddh Gaya. Thence north and west to Kapilavastu, and there will I seek for the River. Nay, I will seek everywhere as I go for the place is not known where the arrow fell. 'And how wilt thou go?

The original Pali text of the Commentary on the Jatakas, written in Ceylon probably about the fifth century of our era. Davids considers its account down to the time of Gautama's return to Kapilavastu, "the best authority we have."

It afforded him no shade; but he told the king that the thought of the danger of "his relatives and kindred made it shady." The king was moved to sympathy for the time, and went back to Sravasti; but the destruction of Kapilavastu was only postponed for a short space, and Buddha himself acknowledged it to be inevitable in the connexion of cause and effect.

That is Kapilavastu, the substance of Kapila, where the Buddha was born. In the Lalita Vistâra it is fairyland. There, Gotama the Buddha is the Prince Charming of a sovereign house. But a prince who developed into a nihilist prior to re-becoming the god that anteriorly he had been. It was while in heaven that he selected Mâyâ, a ranee, to be his mother.

Saturday Lyceum Club, dinner in honour of France to meet the French Ambassador and members of the Embassy, etc. Sunday Te Deum for Greek Independence, Greek Church, Moscow Road. Monday Royal Geographical Society, Sir Henry MacMahon on "Recent Exploration and Survey in Seistan." Tuesday Royal Colonial Institute, dinner and meeting. Royal Asiatic Society, Major Vost on "Kapilavastu."