^18:1 Northern Buddhists assign to the closing years of this period of silence the pronouncement of two or three most important Sutras. The "Saddharmapundarika Sutra" is said to have taken seven years to deliver in its fulness, and (as we have seen) the three Sutras relating to the Mercies and Vow of Amitabha are all ascribed to this period. It is hard to believe that they can all have come from the same mouth at about the same time, for in the one set Amitabha is exalted to the highest of all places; in the other, he occupies only a very inferior position. It seems certain that these Sutras in their present form were not composed until long after S'akyamuni's time. It is possible, however, that in the case of Vaidehi, the Queen of Bimbisara, S'akyamuni may actually have pointed the distressed lady to the Mercies of Amitabha. That amongst the Kshatriyas many monotheistic ideas were afloat about the period of S'akyamuni's activity seems very probable. The worship given by the Bhagavatis to Krishna Vasudeva, which Dr. Grierson has treated of in J.R.A.S, is very much akin to the cult of Amitabha. Clearly such conceptions as the unity of the Godhead and salvation by faith were known in India at a very early date. The troubles in Magadha, the civil wars which ended in the destruction of Kapilavastu, as well as some of the conspiracies against S'akyamuni's life, all fall into this "period of silence." Beyond the limits of India all Asia was in the excitement of the great preparations for the expedition of Xerxes against Greece. Dr. Maeda, in the appendix to "Bukkyo Seiten," gives a very convenient chronology of S'akyamuni's life, which is probably, however, based on the work of Western scholars.

^19:1 This is the Japanese name for the "Saddharmapundarika Sutra."

^20:1 I have heard a Buddhist preacher draw a contrast between Buddha and Christ. The latter, he said, lived all His life in the midst of enemies who were constantly seeking opportunities to destroy Him. He was therefore perpetually in an atmosphere of suspicion, fear, and danger, and the quiet and repose which are so necessary for the teacher of religion, and which were so conspicuous a feature in the life of S'akyamuni, were lacking in the case of Christ. But a perusal of S'akyamuni's life, as it is given, e.g., in the pages of Kern's scholarly work on Buddhism, tends to show that Buddha was a fighter quite as much as was our Lord or St. Paul, and that there was in his ministerial life just as little of rest and quietude as there was for Christ during His three years of similar activities.