priestly tyranny of the Brāhmans,[1] and profoundly impressed with the pathos and struggle of Life, and earnest in the search of some method of escaping from existence which was clearly involved with sorrow.
His touching renunciation of his high estate,[2] of his beloved wife, and child, and home, to become an ascetic, in order to master the secrets of deliverance from sorrow; his unsatisfying search for truth amongst the teachers of his time; his subsequent austerities and severe penance, a much-vaunted means of gaining spiritual insight; his retirement into solitude and self-communion; his last struggle and final triumph — latterly represented as a real material combat, the so-called "Temptation of Buddha": —
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Temptation of Ṣākya Muni
(from a sixth century Ajanta freeco, after Raj. Mitra).
"Infernal ghosts and hellish furies round
Environ'd thee ; some howl'd, some yell'd, some shriek'd,
Some bent at thee their fiery darts, while thou
Sat'st unappall'd in calm and sinless peace";[3]
- ↑ The treatises on Vedic ritual, called the Brāhmanas, had existed for about three centuries previous to Buddha's epoch, according to Max Müller's Chronology (Hibbert Lectures, 1891, p. 58)—the initial dates there given are Ṛig Veda, tenth century b.c.
- ↑ The researches of Vasiliev, etc., render it probable that Siddhārta's father was only a petty lord or chief. (cf. also Oldenberg's Life, Appendix), and that Ṣākya's pessimistic view of life may have been forced upon him by the loss of his territories through conquest by a neighbouring king.
- ↑ Milton's Paradise Regained, Book iv.
