[paragraph continues] Their husbands resorted to Ganesa for advice, who being pleased with their devotion promised a boon; they asked that Gautama might be made to leave his hermitage without their incurring the sin of driving him away. To this Ganesa reluctantly consented; and in order to effect this object he transformed himself into a poor debilitated cow, and walked into a field of rice where Gautama was standing, and began to eat the grain. The sage, knowing nothing of this disguise, took up a straw and tried to drive the cow away; no sooner did he touch it than it fell down dead. Having incurred the enormous guilt of killing a cow, the poor man had to leave the neighbourhood.

Gautama and his wife removed to a distance; but until he had expiated his sin they could not perform acceptable worship. Gautama seeks the Brahmans, and asking how he can be free from his crime, is told to walk round the mountain of Brahma a hundred times; bathe in the Ganges, and consecrate and worship ten million images of Siva. As he is propitiating him, Siva, delighted with the man's earnestness, appears, informs him of the trick by which Ganesa had driven him from the hermitage, and brings the Ganges so near that he can bathe in it easily. Tradition says that Gautama was so disgusted with the conduct of the Brahmans that he separated himself from their communion, and established a new system of religion, which for a time eclipsed Brahmanism.

The following extracts, giving an account of Buddha, are from the "Lalita-Vistara," [**] a Buddhist work from which M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire has taken the materials for his work, "La Boudda et sa Religion."

"Buddha, or more correctly The Buddha--for Buddha

is an appellative, meaning enlightened--was born at Kapilavastu, the capital of a kingdom of that name, situated at the foot of the mountains of Nepal, north of the present Oude. His father, the King of Kapilavastu, was of the family of the Sakyas, and belonged to the clan of the Gautamas. His mother was Mayadevi, daughter of King Suprabuddha, and need we say that she was beautiful, as he was powerful and just? Buddha

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BUDDHA.

was therefore by birth of the Kshattriya, or warrior caste, and he took the name of Sakya from his family, and that of Gautama from his clan, claiming a kind of spiritual relationship with the honoured race of Gautamas. The name of Buddha, or The Buddha, dates from a latter period of his life, and so probably does Siddhartha (he whose objects have been accomplished), though we are told that it was given him in his childhood.