"You ought to know more about it than I," continued Kanishka, "for you devoted yourself to religion by joining the brotherhood, while I am a layman, and my religious notions are not grounded on deeper knowledge."

"Alas!" sighed Charaka, "I am not fit to be a monk. The abbot of the Vihara could not help me and advised me to have my doubts allayed and the problems of my soul settled by of Magadha, the great philosopher and saint who is said to understand the doctrine of the Blessed One, the Buddha."

"What is the problem that oppresses you?" inquired King Kanishka. "Is your soul burdened with sin?"

"I am not guilty of a sinful deed, but I feel that my soul is sinful in its aspirations. My heart is full of passion, and I have an ambitious mind. I would perform great deeds, noble and miraculous, and would solve the problem of life; I would fathom the mysteries of being and comprehend the law of existence, its source and its purpose. There is an undefined yearning in my breast, a desire to do and to dare, to be useful to others, to live to the utmost of my faculties, and to be rooted in the mysterious ground from which springs all the life that unfolds itself in the world. I came into being, and I shall pass out of existence. I believe that I existed before I was born, and

that I shall exist after my death. But these other incarnations of mine are after all other than myself, other at least than my present existence. I understand very well that I am a reproduction of the life impulses that preceded me, and that I shall continue in subsequent reproductions of my karma. But I feel my present self to be the form of this life which will pass away, and I yearn for a union with that eternal substratum of all life which will never pass away."

Kanishka said: "While I was ill I had occasion to meditate on the problem of life and life's relation to death. Once I was dreaming; and in the dream I was not Prince Kanishka, but a king, not King of Gandhara, but of some unknown country, and I was leading my men in battle; and it happened, as in the case of my brother, that I was victorious, and the hostile army before me turned in wild flight, but in the moment of victory a dying enemy shot an arrow at me which pierced my heart, and I knew my end was come. There was a pang of death, but it was not an unpleasant sensation, for my last thought was: 'Death in battle is