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i6 HISTORY OF INDIAN ARCHITECTURE. times are opening out, and we may before long be able to recover a fairly authentic account of the political events of that period, and as perfect a picture of the manners and the customs of those days. It is too true, however, that those who wrote the biography of Buddha in subsequent ages so overlaid the narrative of his life with fables and absurdities, that it is now difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff; but we have sculptures extending back to within three centuries of his death, at which time we may fairly assume that a purer tradition may have prevailed. From what has already occurred, we may hope to creep even further back than this, and eventu- ally to find early illustrations which will enable us to exercise so sound a criticism on the books as to enable us to restore the life of Buddha to such an extent as to place it on a basis of credible historicity. Immense progress has been made during the last fifty or sixty years in investigating the origin of Buddhism, and the propagation of its doctrines in India, and in communicating the knowledge so gained to the public in Europe. More, how- ever, remains to be done before the story is complete, and divested of all the absurdities which subsequent commentators have heaped upon it. Still, the leading events in the life of the founder of the religion are simple, and now sufficiently well ascertained for all practical purposes. 1 The founder of this religion was claimed by tradition as one of the last of a long line of kings, known as the Solar dynasties, who, from a period shortly subsequent to the advent of the Aryans into India, had held paramount sway in Ayodhya the modern Oudh. About the I2th or I3th century B.C. they were superseded by another race of much less purely Aryan blood, known as the Lunar race, who transferred the seat of power to capitals situated in the northern parts of the Doab. But the tradition of the royal birth of Sakyamuni can hardly be sustained historically. He seems to have been born at Kapilavastu, at the foot of the Himalayas, as the son of 1 The most pleasing of the histories of Buddha, written wholly from a European point of view, is that of Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Paris. Of those partially native, partly European, are those of Bishop Bigandet, from the Burmese legends, and the ' Romantic History of Buddha,' translated from the Chinese by the Rev. S. Beal. The ' Lalita Vis- tara,' translated by Foucaux, is more modern than these, and consequently more fabulous and absurd. In more recent years a large literature has appeared on the subject. Prof. H. Oldenberg's ' Buddha : his Life, his Doctrine, his Order,' translated from the German by W. Hoey (1882) supplies an able critical estimate of the teacher. Dr. H. Kern's ' History of Buddhism in India' has been translated into French by G. Huet (Paris, 1901-1903); and W. W. Rockhill's 'Life of Buddha, and the Early History of his Order,' 1884, are also valuable works.