did not exist. That would seem to have been the product of a later age. The Brahman religion existed, but in its infancy. The day of the Vedic gods was not yet over; men still bowed before Indra, Varuna, and the rest of the ancient deities, and the gods whom Buddhism has adopted into its pantheon, such as, e.g., the twin deities that guard the entrance to the temples of the older sects in Japan, belong exclusively to the early period. The Brahmans had doubtless begun the formation of the theological system which was to fetter the intellect as it had fettered the social liberties of the people; but the system was not yet completed, and there were many among the Kshatriyas who openly resisted the pretensions of the sacerdotal class. It was, also, a period of great religious zeal and inquiry. Time and again, in reading the biographical notices connected with the proceedings of S'akyamuni, we find that his converts were men who had for years been searchers after truth; in some cases, as, e.g., that of Uruvilva Kas'yapa, they had themselves been religious teachers, and drew their own followers after them to swell the ranks of S'akyamuni's disciples. But it would seem as though before S'akyamuni's time there was but one path known for the searcher after truth to follow--the way of austerities and penance, which brought power and influence to the sacerdotal Brahmans, without always leading the searcher to the much-coveted enlightenment and peace.

Not all these searchers were convinced by Buddha's methods. S'akyamuni had many rivals, of whom one at least founded a system of belief which has endured to our own time. Mahavira, the founder of the Jain sect, was the contemporary of S'akyamuni, and died in the Kosala country, not many miles from the place where S'akyamuni went to his rest, apparently in the same year as his more celebrated rival. Jainism and Buddhism are kindred faiths, and the Jainists and Buddhists seem to have always looked upon one another as brethren, or, at least, as spiritual cousins.

It was in such a country and in such an age that S'akyamuni was born. The son of Suddhodhana, King of Kapilavastu, and of his wife, the Lady Maya, his birth is said to have been accompanied with marvels which really belong to a later chapter of our book, and his boyhood was marked by a singular precocity of intellect and purity of character. The wise men summoned to the palace at the time of his birth, and especially one of their number, the aged sage Asita, told the happy father that the newborn babe would be either an epoch-making emperor or a world-saving Buddha; and the father, feeling perhaps that charity should begin at home, determined that, if possible, his son should be prepared for the former of the two alternatives. The young Prince Siddhartha was brought up as became a S'akyan prince of high degree; trained in arms, literature, and science, he was surrounded