1850.
Tenets of the Budhists.
549
feeding priests, secures either in the present or some of the numerous future states of being through which they are to pass, a reward of hap- piness; while wickedness, such as taking animal life, will be followed with a sure penalty of suffering, either in the present or some future state of being. But no God, nor intelligent agent, has any part in award- ing these premiums and penalties; they follow as a necessary sequence.
Godama, the last god of the Budhists, according to their own chro- nology, died B.C. 543. He is said to be the 25th Budha, and the 4th of the present kulpa, or world. One more Budha, viz., Maitree, is expected during the present world. Godama was of princely birth; his native place was on the banks of the Ganges, some three or four hundred miles from its mouth. Near his birth-place are the present Patna and Benares-two places famed for the production of opium. Thus the same district may claim the honor of furnishing the world with two specifics for putting people to sleep. One reduces its votaries to a temporary dream of happiness from which they soon awake to real misery; the other promises its disciples, as the reward of their meritorious services, an absorption into nothingness! The Budhists do not imagine that Godama himself in any sense is now existent, but verily believe that when he died, his intellectual being which had till then, constituted his identity throughout the various stages of his transmigratory existence became absolutely extinct. The disciples of Budha, now including so many millions of the human race, have no god to fear, no god to worship, no god to punish or protect them, since, according to their own theory, Godama, more than two thousand years ago, passed into absolute annihilation.
The images of Budha represent a human figure in a symmetrical form with a sleepy countenance, having the toes as well as the fingers all of equal length, and the ears extending to the shoulders. These are made of iron, or brass, or of bricks and mortar, of the size of a man and in a sitting posture; the images vary in size from those of a finger's length to some so immense that they might class with the won- ders of the world. One has been seen in Siam which measures one hundred and thirty feet in length, and is made in good proportions, lying in a reclining posture, and gilded from head to foot. At times more than a hundred of these gilded images, six feet high, are found surrounding a single temple, with one 40 or 50 feet high within.
The Budhist priests wear a yellow robe, shave their heads, and collect their meals in person by going at early dawn from house to house with a rice-pot to receive from the people their food already cooked, which they eat before the middle of the day. They may take tea and fruits