Gautama was the son of a petty chieftain, who exercised limited authority in a district which lay north of Faîzâbâd. He lived about 600 years before the beginning of the Christian era—about the time when Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar and Assyria to the Medes. The evils of disease, old age, and death weighed on the melancholy mind of the young princelet: he sought for some way of escape from the curse of craving flesh and the wild delirium of desire. He abandoned wife and family; and dwelt, at first, in the solitude of a jungle. At this time, his life was one of pure contemplation. Then a wave of love for humanity and profound grief at human suffering swept over him. He resumed the active life, preaching a pure religion of duty and affection along the valley of the Ganges; for his soul, like the soul of Plato’s poet, “was no longer within him.” He had learned and he taught that the misery of Being is mitigated by strict obedience to the Law of human kindness and duty. He made stirring appeals to heart and conscience, and supported his mission by the ancient doctrine of Kharma, which Brâhmans had taught him—the doctrine that the action of the evil will, barren as its fruits invariably prove for the living agent, is delayed, but not destroyed, by death, and builds up a new body and mind, which reap the bitter harvest of former transgression and also the weal which results from former well-doing. The heart achieves blessedness in proportion to its purification; a good life acquires merit, by means of which relative freedom is obtained from the mournful, malevolent turnings of the “wheel of things.” Completely purified, Nirvâna (which is sometimes interpreted as nescience, sometimes as the supra-conscious), peace in the very heart of things, is obtained. All men may be touched by love; but only rare intelligencies will seek Nirvâna. For the way to the Blessed Life is steep and beset with thorns; but the resolute spirit may achieve increasing and even perfect tranquillity by uprooting every germ of ill-will and trampling down every one of those passions of mind or body the results of which are as futile as their origin is senseless. Gautama accepted the institution of the cloister then, for such men of high intelligence as sought the truly spiritual. In time Buddhistic monasticism became divided into the system of the “Lesser Vehicle”—an ascetic scheme of discipline,—and that of the “Greater Vehicle” for richer and more metaphysical minds. The first aimed at restraint; the second, at contemplation. Buddha had no regard for caste; and this brought his teaching into conflict with that of the Brâhmans; he promised no endless personal life in heaven—only progressive release from the evils of temporal existence; he did not interfere with the popular worship of gods. His doctrine was an appeal to our more spiritual nature, and closely resembles the Sermon on the Mount. It awakened a people bound by a system of lifeless forms framed by a priestly caste, yet who were all athirst for living waters.

But Buddhism speedily became metaphysical in the metaphysical East. Some of the convents grew into abodes of speculation and seminaries of learning. It was held that Gautama was the latest of those Buddhas, those “redeemers” of the world, into whose mother’s womb Bôdhisattva, the spirit about to become a Buddha, descended spiritually. Yet the purest teaching of the Spirit contains within itself the seeds of its own decay: the germ of fulfilment is also the germ of dissolution. The history of Buddhism strikingly illustrates the truth of this, its own tenet. Before long the new Faith, like unto Brâhmanism, became half-throttled by formalism and encrusted by all manner of ridiculous legend and vulgar superstition. And Asôka, who usurped a throne and established an Empire at Magadha, near Behar (in the 3rd century before Christ?) embodied the ethics of Buddhism in formal ordinances. The letter and not the spirit, of the Law prevailed. But Asôka sent forth missionaries, East and West and North and South, and they reached far distant lands.

Probably imperfect and infrequent relations between Chinese Buddhists and Indian priests were maintained through the medium of caravans of trade. These have left no record; but in A.D. 65, the Chinese Authorities sent envoys to Sind by the long, painful, and perilous overland route. They returned with an Indian priest, sacred writings, and sacred images of Buddha. After this, an occasional embassy from India arrived; but such missions soon came to an end, although a little intercourse was kept up with Ceylon by means of an arduous and dangerous voyage. Not until the fourth century were Chinamen allowed to become Buddhist priests. Then, at once, monasteries sprang up all over the country. About the year 400 Fa-Hian and others with him were sent on an embassy to secure religious writings. They made their difficult way through Central Asia. Fa-Hian alone returned, after 14 years absence, by way of Ceylon, bearing authentic scripture with him. A hundred years later Sung-Yun became a pilgrim to the same end and was successful in securing a hundred and seventy volumes. Gautama, like Jesus, had taught by word of mouth only. His manner was to utter some pithy precept, and then to develop it in a running commentary. But his disciples recorded these precious words; and, from time to time, expositions and doctrinal developments and marvellous fables were added. Of these, the earlier were written in Pali; the later in Sanskrit, even then a dead tongue, knowledge of which was the privilege of a small learned class. These Buddhistic writings, made on prepared palm-leaves, were regarded by the faithful with superstitious reverence; and Chinese Buddhists were anxious to obtain complete and accurate copies of them, as well as sacred images and relics of Buddha, which might serve as the objects of deep veneration.

At no period has the disordered tragedy of human history been more cataclysmic than in the early part of the Seventh Century after Christ. The whole world was then a theatre of wild unrest and stupendous change, little as one fragment of the human race might know of aught but its own disasters or triumphs. The shattered edifice of the Roman Empire of the West was run over by Lombard, Frank and Goth and races still more barbarous than these. From Cheviot to Illyricum, all was confused, bloody, and unceasing riot. The exceptional vigour of Heraclius alone saved the Roman Empire of the East from the ever-watchful and now advancing hosts of Persia; while a new and wholly unexpected menace arose in the Arabian desert: there a peril burst forth as abrupt, fierce and overwhelming as a sandstorm of that rocky waste. For Mohammed and his followers advanced thence with fiery and resistless speed to offer the nations choice between the Koran, tribute, and the sword. Even distant, tranquil China, the land cut off from the rest of mankind was parturient: the Empire had broken up, and was contended for by vulturine feudatories, who fought together for sole possession of its bleeding carcase. A new and strong dynasty arose amid slaughter and desolation. But, for a time, Central China was hell let loose. The adolescence of Hiuen-Tsiang was passed amid scenes of death and dismay.

CHAPTER III.
AN ADVENTUROUS JOURNEY.

This boldest of pilgrims, greatest of Chinese travellers came into the world A.D. 603—nearly twelve hundred years after the founder of his faith. He was the fourth son of a Chinese Professor in the Province of Ho-nan, in Central China. Probably he shewed mental ability and a devotional spirit early; for the second of his elder brethren took him into his own monastery at Lo-Yang, the Eastern Capital, to supervise his education. The boy is said to have evinced such brilliant parts and such a spiritual mind that he became a novice at what would seem, at that time, to have been the exceptionally early age of thirteen years; although, two centuries before, Fa-Hian was a novice at three! It was soon after this event that revolution shook the ancient Empire, and came near to disrupt it. China became a slaughter-house, and Buddhist priests were murdered as well as Government Officials.

As certain saints bear witness, the passion that wings its flight towards no earthly home is occasionally combined with bold and efficient direction of mundane life. It was so combined in Hiuen-Tsiang. The monk of perfervid faith gave early proof that he was a lad of mettle as well as an enthusiast for the Greater Vehicle. In resolution and spirit, he dominated his elder brother, and insisted on their both setting off, in the teeth of peril, for a safer place in the Eastern province of Sz-chuen; and here he ended his novitiate and was fully ordained at the age of twenty.

At last, chaos within the Chinese frontier and warfare along it began to yield to the military genius and state-craft of T’ai-Tsung, the greatest of Chinese warriors and rulers. Hiuen-Tsiang was not slow to avail himself of the return of some measure of tranquillity to the State. He disobeyed monastic authority, joined a band of nomadic traders, and visited convent after convent of the wide Empire, with the purpose of clearing his mind, in debate with their inmates, concerning difficult problems in scriptural scholarship and the precise import of certain tenets of his faith. There was full scope for speculative discussion, since Chinese Buddhists did not yet possess a complete set of the Sacred Writings or of the Buddhist Fathers and workers in that kind of suggestive fiction which is so often taken to be veritable history and which becomes the wardrobe of moral truth. Much was, as yet, unsettled by authority and lay open to dispute.