ABSTRACT
Buddha, the founder of the religion called after him Buddhism, was of royal descent and first saw the light in the north of Benares somewhere about 624 b.c. "Buddha," the official title by which he came to be known, means the Awakener, but he was also called Shakyamuni, "the sage of the Shakya clan." Shakyamuni entered upon a course of severest penance and mortification, dwelling apart from men. In six years' time he was so emaciated that he could scarcely move, and the fame of his holiness "spread abroad like the sound of a great bell hung in the canopy of the skies." During the opening years of the Tang dynasty a.d. 618-907 it flourished, the imperial favour lavished upon the alien religion reaching its climax when one of the Emperors, Hsien Tsung, publicly received and paid honours to a bone of Shakyamuni which had been conveyed with all solemnity from India to China.
