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Updated: June 22, 2025
A magic wind passed over the watchmen, and they fell into a deep sleep, while the massive gates opened noiselessly of themselves. When he was far away from Kapilavastu, he sent his servant back with the horse and its royal trappings, changed clothes with a tattered beggar, and went on alone.
Kapilavastu means the substance of Kapila. The substance is atheism. History has its hesitancies. Often it stammers uncertainly. But its earliest pages agree in representing Kapila as the initial religious rebel. Kapila was the first to declare the divine a human and invalid conjecture.
For the condition of Nirvana, understood by philosophical Buddhists as that of the extinction of desires even to the desire of life, and of the complete enlightenment of the mind even to the recognition that existence itself is an illusion, has no such meaning to the millions who profess themselves the followers of the sage of Kapilavastu.
The country of Kapilavastu is a great scene of empty desolation. The inhabitants are few and far between. On the roads people have to be on their guard against white elephants and lions, and should not travel incautiously. Kapilavastu, "the city of beautiful virtue," was the birthplace of Sakyamuni, but was destroyed, as intimated in the notes on last chapter, during his lifetime.
The intense desire to uplift his people to a higher consciousness. Gautama, prince of the house of Siddhartha, of the Sakya class, was born in northern India in the township of Kapilavastu, in the year 556 B.C., according to the best authorities, as interpreted and reported by Max Muller.
He is called in Pali Kala Devala, and had been a minister of Suddhodana's father. In "The Life of Buddha" we read that the Lichchhavis of Vaisali had sent to the young prince a very fine elephant; but when it was near Kapilavastu, Devadatta, out of envy, killed it with a blow of his fist. The young Sakyas were shooting when the prince thus surpassed them all. He was then seventeen.
Returning thus to Kapilavastu, the whole country appeared withered and bare, as when one comes back to a deserted village; or as when the sun hidden behind Sumeru causes darkness to spread over the world. The fountains of water sparkled no more, the flowers and fruits were withered and dead, the men and women in the streets seemed lost in grief and dismay.
According to "The Light of Asia" when the Buddha preached at Kapilavastu there were assembled men and devils, beasts and birds, all victims alike of the cruel fate that ruled the world. Existence was an evil and only the Buddha could be found to pity.
Sir Edwin Arnold has greatly added to the force of its legend by the Christian phrases and Christian conceptions which he has read into it. Toward the close of the "Light of Asia" he also introduces into the Buddha's sermon at Kapilavastu the teachings of Herbert Spencer and others of our own time.
Here was Kapilavastu, here the Middle Kingdom, and here Mahabodhi, the Mecca of Buddhism; and here was Kusinagara, sad place of the Holy One's death. The old man bowed his head over the sheets in silence for a while, and the Curator lit another pipe. Kim had fallen asleep. When he waked, the talk, still in spate, was more within his comprehension.
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