CHAPTER I.

LIFE OF SHAKYAMUNI TILL HIS APPEARANCE AT BENARES AS A TEACHER.

Previous lives--Chronology--The seventh Buddha--Birth--Early life--Becomes a hermit--Becomes Buddha--Legendary stories of his early preaching--Hwa-yen-king--Extramundane teaching--Appearance at Benares.

IN examining the Buddhist writings, the reader is at once reminded that he has entered a field where he is deprived of the trustworthy guidance and careful adherence to facts and dates of native Chinese authors. Not only is this true of works that contain the wilder extravagances of Indian mythology, and introduce the wondering disciple to the scenery and inhabitants of numberless other worlds, even those that wear an historical look, and yield the most information, do not fail thus to betray their foreign origin. The doctrine of transmigrations, and an eternal succession of kalpas past and future, is tempting to the biographer who wishes for variety of incident. He can place his hero wherever he pleases, in the universe boundless in space and time of the Indian imagination. The founder of Buddhism, Shakyamuni, or the "Sage of the house of Shakya," is a case in point. It is said of him that before his birth more than two thousand years since in the present kalpa, he had during many previous ones taken religious vows,