PART I
CHAPTER I
Thus have I heard.
Nearly two thousand five hundred years ago, in the City of Kapila in Northern India, the spring came with glory. And surely nowhere in all the three worlds is spring more gracious, for the sunshine, life-giving, inspiring, draws divine scents from moist earth and the deep luxuriance of leaves and flowers to send on every breathing breeze pure incense from the world, rejoicing as a bride in the all-enfolding delight.
Here stood the little City of Kapila, nobly placed, as beseems the birthplace of the Perfect One, and above it the Himalayas stormed the skies with tossing billows of snow, leading the aspiration of man on and up until it melted in the Divine. On these, as was known, the Divinities had their dwelling. Thence Indra, the heavenly lord, drove his flocks of clouds to pasture in pure air, taking form and colour from the splendours of the sun and the moon and the silver embroidery of the constellations. Vaya, lord of the winds, charged in thunder or breathed in music from awful heights of snow. Surya, the Sun, urged his golden steeds from the low horizon to the zenith and on to the confines of night. Chandra, the moon, rose on the crest of the mighty range and sank below it into his mysterious kingdom in the darkening west. The deep pine forests clothing the lower spurs and veiling the sources of the rivers must surely have their indwelling spirits, and the river Rohini, breaking light-foot from the heights to scatter her diamonds as she leaped from rock to rock or brooded a moment in deep pools mirroring her ferns and flowers—what was she but a lovely, living nymph, a Dancer, pure as the silver peaks that fathered her? Therefore let it be known that this city was set among celestial influences, that the gates of the Paradise of India were not far from it, and that the Four Celestial Kings were its wardens. And it dwelt at this time in a great peace.
The city and surrounding country, a part of the great kingdom of Kosala, were inhabited by the Sakya clan. Very great was the kingdom of Kosala. The vast and holy city of Benares, a hundred miles south from Kapila, was but one of its cities, and its capital, Savatthi, lay in the cloudy mountains of Nepal. To the south-east lay the kingdom of Magadha, and only the great Gods then knew to which of these kingdoms would fall the sceptre of India.