Of Buddha, the founder of this great movement, legendary tradition has much to say, but very little of historical worth is known. His father seems to have been a petty raja, ruling over a small community on the southern border of the district now known as Nepal. Buddha's family name was Gotama (Sanskrit Gautama), and it was probably by this name that he was known in life. In all likelihood it was after his death that his disciples bestowed on him a number of laudatory names, the most common being Buddha, i.e. "the enlightened". Like the newborn youths of his day, he must have spent some time in the study of the sacred Vedas. After the immemorial custom of the East, he married at an early age, and, if tradition may be trusted, exercised a prince's privilege of maintaining a harem. His principal wife bore him a son. His heart was not at rest. The pleasures of the world soon palled upon him, and abandoning his home he retired to the forest, where as a hermit he spent several years in austere self-discipline, studying doubtless, the way of salvation as taught in the Upanishads. Even this did not bring peace to his mind. He gave up the rigorous fasts and mortifications, which nearly cost him his life, and devoted himself in his own way to long and earnest meditation, the fruit of which was his firm belief that he had discovered the only true method of escaping from the misery of rebirth and of attaining to Nirvana. He then set out to preach his gospel of deliverance, beginning at Benares. His magnetic personality and his earnest, impressive eloquence soon won over to his cause a number of the warrior caste. Brahmins, too, felt the persuasiveness of his words, and it was not long before he was surrounded by a band of enthusiastic disciples, in whose company he went from place to place, by making converts by his preaching. These soon became very numerous and were formed into a great brotherhood of monks. Such was the work to which Buddha gave himself with unsparing zeal for over forty years. At length, worn out by his long life of activity, he fell sick after a meal of dried boar's flesh, and died in the eightieth year of his age. The approximate date of his death is 480 B.C. It is noteworthy that Buddha was a contemporary of two other famous religious philosophers, Pythagoras and Confucius. In the sacred books of later times Buddha is depicted as a character without flaw, adorned with every grace of mind and heart. There may be some hesitation in taking the highly colored portrait of Buddhist tradition as the exact representation of the original, but Buddha may be credited with the qualities of a great and good man. The records depict him moving about from place to place, regardless of personal comfort, calm and fearless, mild and compassionate, considerate towards poor and rich alike, absorbed with the one idea of freeing all men from the bonds of misery, and irresistible in his manner of setting forth the way of deliverance. In his mildness, his readiness to overlook insults, his zeal, chastity, and simplicity of life, he reminds one not a little of St. Francis of Assisi. In all pagan antiquity no character has been depicted as so noble and attractive.
--- In ppiindia@yahoogroups.com, Susane Fatimah > KISAH KELAPARAN
