The rapid growth and untimely disappearance of Bud dhism is a startling religious fact. It lingered in India till the twelfth or thirteenth century and then it vanished from its old home. Just as the faith of Jesus now meets with bare toleration in the sacred city of his Passion, so in nearly every district of India which once the disciples of Sakya Muni visited with the most intense devotion, his very name is now forgotten. At the very spot where he first preached his purer faith, his title the " best Lord," Sarnath, is applied to the God Mahadeva, whose symbol, the lingam, is enshrined in the small temple on the bank of the lake, where the Master used to come to wash his beggar's bowl. The cause of its extinction, writes the author of The Religions of India, is obvious. " The Buddhist victorious was not the modest and devout mendicant of the early church. The fire of hate, lighted if at all by Buddhism, smouldered till Brahminism, in the form of Hinduism, had begotten a religion as popular as Buddhism, or rather far more popular, for two reasons. Bud dhism had no such picturesque tales as those that enveloped with poetry the history of the man-god Krishna. . . . Again, Buddhism in its monastic development had separated itself more and more from the people. Not mendicant monks, urging to a purer life, but opulent churches with fat priests ; not simple discourses calculated to awaken the moral and religious consciousness, but subtle arguments on discipline and metaphysics were now what Buddhism represented." The love of man, the spirit of Buddhism, was dead, and Buddhism crumbled to pieces.
As we drive back to Benares, we skirt the Mrigadava, or Deer Park, which is connected with a poetic legend concern ing the great teacher. When Buddha was passing through the innumerable existences which were preparing him for the conditions of human life, he was alone on earth as a king of a herd of deer. The Raja of Benares, who was fond of sport, slaughtered so many of them that Buddha, the king of the deer, remonstrated with him, and engaged to provide the Raja with an antelope daily for his table. The Raja agreed to the proposal, and chance daily decided which animal should be sacrificed for the public good. The lot one day fell upon a hind big with young, but she refused to yield herself to her fate, protesting that her offspring's hour to die could not in common justice have come before it had seen the light of day. She told her sorrow to Buddha.
He replied, " Sad indeed ; the heart of the loving mother grieves (is moved) for that which is not yet alive (has no body). I to-day will take your place and die." Going to the Royal gate (i.e. the palace), the people who travelled along the road passed the news along, and said in a loud voice, " That great king of the deer is going now towards the town." The people of the capital, the magistrates and others, hastened to see. The king, hearing of it, was unwilling to believe the news ; but when the gate-keeper assured him of the truth then the king believed it. Then, addressing the deer-king, he said, " Why have you come here ? " The deer-(king) replied, " There is a female in the herd big with young, whose turn it was to die ; but my heart could not bear to think that the young, not yet horn, should perish so. I have therefore come in her place." The king, hearing it, sighed and said, " I have indeed the body of a man, but am as a deer. You have the body of a deer, but are as a man." Then for pity's sake he released the deer, and no longer required a daily sacrifice. Then he gave up that forest for the use of the deer, and so it was called " the forest given to the deer," and hence its name the " deer-plain " (or, wild).
The story of Buddha being the king of the deer represents the spirit of gentleness and love which ran like a golden web through the teaching of the Master " who was so kind." Buddha died in the fifth century. When life was fast ebbing away he said to his disciples weeping around him : " Behold, brethren, I exhort you, saying, transitory are all component things : toil without ceasing." And these were the last words of Buddha. Though dead he yet speaketh. " Better than going to heaven, better than lordship over all the world is the reward of entering the stream of holiness." Great is the contrast between Benares with its shrines de dicated to gods endowed with human lusts and passions, and the ruined mound at Sarnath around which lingers the memory of a pure and noble life, and the echo of sweet and earnest words.