[10]One hundred is given as a round number. The actual distance is about one hundred and twenty miles.—Corr.
[11]Tapas is a Sanskṛit word, derived from the root tap, ‘to burn, torment.’ It is connected with Lat. tepeo, Greek Θάπτω, which last originally denoted ‘to burn,’ not ‘to bury’ dead bodies. Tapas ought not to be translated by ‘penance,’ unless that word is restricted to the sense poena, ‘pain.’
[12]Such men are called Pañća-tapās (Manu VI. 23). A good representation of this form of Tapas may be seen in the Museum of the Indian Institute, Oxford.
[13]According to Dr. Oldenberg, the Mṛityu of the Kaṭhopanishad.
[14]In the same way the Cistercian monks of Fountain’s Abbey lived under certain trees while the Abbey was building.
[15]The Bhagavad-gītā (V. 28) asserts:—‘The sage (Yogī) who is internally happy, internally at peace, and internally illumined, attains extinction in Brahma.’ This is pure Buddhism if we substitute Cessation of individual existence for Brahma.
[16]Or Kuṡa-nagara, identified by Gen. Sir A. Cunningham with Kasia, 35 miles east of Gorakh-pore on an old channel of the Chota Gandak.
[17]I give 420 as a round number. Rhys Davids has good reasons for fixing the date of Gautama’s death about B.C. 412, Oldenberg about 480, Cunningham 478, Kern 388. The old date is 543.
[18]See Book of the great Decease, translated by Rhys Davids, p. 72.
[19]The Ṡatapatha-brāhmaṇa (p. 1064) and the Bṛihad-āraṇyaka Upanishad (p. 455) affirm that the Ṛig- Yajur- Sāma- and Atharva-veda, the Upanishads, Itihāsas, and Purāṇas were all the breath (niḥṡvasitāni) of the Supreme Being. And Sāyaṇa, the well-known Indian Commentator on the Ṛig-veda, speaking of the Supreme Being in his Introduction, says, Yasya niḥṡvasitaṃ Vedāḥ, ‘whose breath the Vedas were.’