The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1876-02-18
BUDDHISM.
The Ruling Religion OF Asia

Inc Kui1ng Religion OF ASIA.
THE London Telegraph has the following letter
from its correspondent who is accompanying the
Prince of Wales on his Indian tour
After brief but pleasant stay in Cey.
lon, the Prince of Wales has returned to
the Indian mainland, where he has open
ed a useful railway, and is on his way to
Calcutta by Tuticorin and Madras. In
that short demarche he witnessed some
thing which is surely worth as much at
tention az any festive ceremonies or
hunting excursions; he has seen Budd-
hism and the Buddhists. The yellow
robed priests of Sakya-muni were numer-
ous among those who welcomed him in
the beautiful island. At Handy they
showed him their sacred relics and books,
their temples and viharas, and the holy
tooth itself of Buddha; and nowhere else,
except perhaps in Siam, could His Royal
Highness have caught further glimpse
of the most widely-spread religion in ali
the world This phrase may, perhaps,
startle some persons, yet there can be
no doubt that more persons profess the
faith of Gautama, and live and die by it,
than are included under either the Chris
tian or the Mohammedan creeds. Not
only the holy isle where, according to
pious fable, the footprint of the Lord
Buddha 10 still impressed on Adams
Peak, but Siam, the Indian Archipelago,
Napal, and the vast uplands north of
the Himalaya, with nearly all China and
Japan, follow, more or less purely, the
doctrine of this great reformer and
teacher. What four hundred millions
of our fellow creatures believe demands
assuredly more respectful study than
has yet been given to this remarkable
faith; and it may be safely asserted
that the more the life and doctrines
of Gautama are really understood, the
deeper admiration and interest must be
felt for them by all thoughtful minds.
In saying this, there is no need to exalt
Buddhism, as some have done, at the
expense of orthodoxy. Nothing is more
clear than that, in the education of the
world, different races are led toward
morality and religion by different ex-
pressions of q common truth: and that
these, too generally, decline from their
original purity, as Brahminism had done
when, about six centuries before the
Christian era, the wonderful man arose
who stamped his gentle and spiritual
creed upon the heart of Asia. Sakya-
mum, a Prince born in the palace of Sudd-
no o'dana, King of Magadha, now Behar,
was comely in person, richly gifted by
nature and education, and able to COM
mand by wish what the world could of
fer in the shape of pleasure. AS in the
cases of other religious teachers, myth
cal marvels have been heaped upon the
simple facts of his birth. Golden lights
shone from the midnight sky, and the
images of the gods rose up and bowed
Themselves when he assumed mortal form
so says the Lalita Vistara. But, in
plain truth, he was a Brahmin Prince,
and one born with heart so full of in
finite charity and holy aspirations that
the story of his life and teachings,
purged from the corruptions and extrav-
agances which superstition has added,
would do Christendom itself good, and
will explain why Buddhism has extend
ed far and wide. Early in his splendid
and lofty life the young Prince felt to
his inmost soul the pathos of human ex-
istence, the "still, sad music of human
ity," and the tales which illustrate his
wakening sense of the sorrow of mortal
ity are among the loveliest idyls of relig-
ious history. We see him. under the
MONDAY heat, watching the toiling oxen,
the wearied husbandmen, and that per-
petual strife between living creatures, of
which the bright sky and fertile earth
were full-the insect eaten by the bird,
the bird devoured by the snake, the
snake consumed by the ichneumon, till
the heart of the Prince is heavy with the
endless labors and the savage animosities
Of life Riding himself. with douhtfu1
conscience, to the chase, he sees sick
man, an old man, and a dead man, and
returns to mediate on the three immense
evils of suffering, decrepitude and
death, which overtake all alike. Even
the fairest things on earth are perceived
by him to lose their charm, and to be
little better than shows and illusions
deceitful forms in the phantasmagoria of
the apparent which makes up the world.
Neither painter nor poet could find
nobler subject than when the Prince
Sakya-full .of.tbese sad musings, and