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But it is not Buddhism as professed by the hundreds of millions in Ceylon, in Thibet, China, Japan, and Siberia, who claim Sakyamuni under his names Buddha, the awakened, Tathagata, thus gone, or gone before, Siddartha, the accomplisher of the wish, and threescore and ten others of like purport, as their inspired teacher.
According to this standard of authority Gautama was born about the sixth century B.C., as the son and heir of a rajah of the Sakya tribe of Aryans, living about eighty miles north by northwest of Benares. His mother, the principal wife of Kajah Suddhodana, had lived many years without offspring, and she died not long after the birth of this her only son, Siddartha.
He was named by the King, "Siddartha," a word meaning one who always succeeds in what he undertakes and because of the portents at his birth the King himself bowed down to his own son and did him homage. Now the King desired greatly that the first of the two prophecies should come to pass.
But I felt that if Prince Siddartha could speak out of Nirvana he would say: "Don't worship that tooth, Josiah Allen's wife; it hain't mine nor never wuz; but worship the principles of love and compassion and self-sacrifice I tried to teach to my people." And almost instinctively I sez, "I will, Prince Siddartha, I will." And Josiah sez: "What say, Samantha?"
Buddhism was an after-thought, only reached after six years of bootless asceticism. There is no evidence that when Siddartha left his palace he had any thought of benefiting anybody but himself. He entered upon the life of the recluse with the same motives and aims that have influenced thousands of other monks and anchorets of all lands and ages some of them princes like himself.
This was the form which piety had assumed in India from time immemorial, under the guidance of the Brahmans; for Siddârtha as yet is not the "enlightened," he is only an inquirer after that saving knowledge which will open the door of a divine felicity, and raise him above a world of disease and death. Siddârtha's rigorous austerities, however, do not open this door of saving truth.
Hence the prince Siddârtha, as soon as he had found the wisdom of inward motive and the folly of outward rite, shook off the yoke of the priests, and denounced caste and austerities and penances and sacrifices as of no avail in securing the welfare and peace of the soul or the favor of deity.
Older than the Vedas of Para-Brahm or the Up-Angas of Vyasa, O Melchior; older than the songs of Homer or the metaphysics of Plato, O my Gaspar; older than the sacred books or kings of the people of China, or those of Siddartha, son of the beautiful Maya; older than the Genesis of Mosche the Hebrew oldest of human records are the writings of Menes, our first king."
Sadly the Prince rode back to the Palace with his appetite for pleasure spoiled for the day, and when his father heard what had taken place he was greatly alarmed, for the first of the omens had now been fulfilled. It was not long before Siddartha looked also on Sickness. Try as he might the King could not keep sorrowful sights from the eyes of his son any longer.
Siddartha was startled at the sunken eyes, the wrinkled yellow cheeks and the gray locks of an old man, and turning to his attendant asked him what terrible misfortune had brought such a fate upon a fellow creature.
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