BUDAON', BUDAUN, or BUDAYOON, a t. of India, 140 m. n.w. of Lucknow, giving its name to a British district of the Rohilcund division of the lieutenant-governorship of the n.w. provinces. It is situated in 28' 2' n. lat. and 79° 11' e. long. Its pop. was officially ascertained in 1872 to amount to 33,322. it was occupied by the mutineers and a body of liberated prisoners from Bareilly, June 1, 1857. The Europeans escaped by flight. It was captured by gen. Whitelock, April 19, 1858, and the rebels in this quar ter were soon afterwards entirely subdued.—The district of Budaon contains an area of 2005 sq.m.. and a pop. (1872) of 934,348. of which nearly six sevenths are Hindus, and the remainder mostly 31ussulmans. The district is a level, fertile tract on the Ganges and tributaries of it, of which the chief is the Ramgunga, BUDDtELTS, JOHANN FRANZ, 1667-1729; a learned Lutheran divine, b. in Pomera nia. At Wittenberg he won distinction in languages, theology, and history; was Greek and Latin professor at Coburg, professor of ethical sciences and politics in the university of Halle, and in 1705 professor of divinity at Jena. He produced an historical German dictionary, an ecclesiastical history of the Old Testament, a work on practical philoso phy, one on laws, end a universal theological history.
The religion known as Buddhism (from the title of "The Buddha," meaning " the wise," " the enlightened," acquired by its founder) has existed now for 2460 years, and may be said to be the prevailing religion of the world,. In Hindustan, the land of its birth, it has now little hold, except amono. the Icepaulese" and some other northern tribn;"trnt it bears full sway in Ceylon, and over the whole eastern peninsula; it divides the adherence of the Chinese with the systems-of Confu cius and Lao-tse, claiming perhaps two thirds of the population; it prevails also in Japan (although not the established religion); and, n. of the Himalayas, it is the religion of Thibet (where it assumes the form of Lamaism), and of the Mongolian population of central Asia, and extends to the very n. of Siberia, and even into Swedish Lapland. Its ilifiCerents are estimated at 400 millions—more than a third of the human race. Yet, tilY near the middle of this century, was known in Europe respecting the nature and origin of this world-religion, beyond the vaguest notices and conjectures. About the year 1828, Mr. B.11. Hodgson, British resident at the court of Nepali', where Buddhism prevails, discovered the existence of a large set of writings in the Sanscrit language, forming the national canonical books. These books have since been found to be the texts from which the Buddhist Scriptures of Thibet, Mongolia, and China must have been translated. The books of the Ceylon Buddhists are in the language called Pali; and though not translations of the Nepaulese standards, they are found to agree with them in substance, and to be only another and somewhat later version of the same tra ditions. Translations from the Ceylon standards are used by the Buddhists of Burraah
and Si,am. Copies of the Sanscrit books of Nepaul, having been sent by Mr. Hodgson to the Asiatic societies of London and Paris, engaged the attention of the eminent ori ental scholar, Eugene Burnouf, who published in 1844 his Introduction to the _History of Buddhism; and this book may be said to have been the beginning of anything like cor rect information on the subject among the western nations.
The most diverse opinions had previously prevailed as to the time and place of the origin of Buddhism. Soffit looked upon it as a relic of what had been the original religion of ITrirdlistaii, before Brahmanism intruded and it out; a relic of a wide spread primeval worship, whose ramifications it was endeavored to trace by identifying Buddha with the Woden of the Scandinavians, the Thoth or Hermes of the ancient Egyptians, and other mythological personao.es. Others held that it could not be older than Christianity, and must have originated in a blundering aftempt to copy that religion—so striking are the points of resemblance that present themselves. Although are still wanting of giving a circumstantial history of Buddhism, the main outline is no longer doubtful. Oriental scholars now concur in fixing the date of its origin about the beginning of the 6th c. B.C., and in making it spring up in the n. of Hindustan. According to the Buddhist books, the founder of the religion was a prince of the name of Siddhartha, son of Suddliodana, which is on les of Oude and Nepaul. He is often called Sakya, which was the name of the family, and also Gautama, the name of the great " Solar" race of which the family was a branch. The name Sakya often becomes Sakya-muni (nzuni, in San., means " solitary," and is allied to Gr. mows, the root of " monk"), in allusion to the solitary habits assumed by the prince. To Gautama is frequently pre fixed Sramana, meaning ascetic. Of the names, or rather titles, given to Siddhartha in his state of perfection, the most important is the Buddha,* is from the root budh, to know, and, according to Wilson, means properly, " he to whom truth is known:" it is indicative of the leading doctrine of his system. Others are " The blessed " (Bhaga vat); " the venerable of the world;" " the Bodhisatva," the import of which will be afterwards explained. The history of this person is overlaid with a mass of extrava gant and incredible legend; and at least one eminent orientalist, prof. H. H. Wilson, thinks it still doubtful whether the Buddha was an actual historical personage, and not rather an allegorical figment. Agreeing that the doctrine was introduced about the time assigned, he thinks it more likely that it originated with a school formed of per sons of various castes, comprising even Brahmans. But by oriental authorities gener ally, the Buddha is received as the actual personal founder of the religion that goes by his name.