from
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Buddha \Bud"dha\, n. [Skr. buddha wise, sage, 'the enlightened'
fr. budh to know.]
1. The title of an incarnation of self-abnegation, virtue,
and wisdom.
[1913 Webster]
2. The title of Siddhartha or Gautama, a deified religious
teacher of the Buddhists and the founder of Buddhism;
called also {Gautama Siddartha} or {Sakya Sinha} (or
Muni). From three newly discovered inscriptions of the
emperor Asoka it follows that the 37th year of his reign
was reckoned as the 257th from the death of Buddha. Hence
it is inferred that Buddha died between 482 and 472 B. C.
It being agreed that he lived to be eighty, he was born
between 562 and 552 B. C. The Buddhist narratives of his
life are overgrown with legend and myth. Senart seeks to
trace in them the history of the sun-hero. Oldenberg finds
in the most ancient traditions -- those of Ceylon -- at
least definite historical outlines. Siddhartha, as Buddha
was called before entering upon his great mission, was
born in the country and tribe of the Sakhyas, at the foot
of the Nepalese Himalayas. His father, Suddhodana, was
rather a great and wealthy landowner than a king. He
passed his youth in opulence at Kapila-vastu, the Sakhya
capital. He was married and had a son Rahula, who became a
member of his order. At the age of twenty-nine he left
parents, wife, and only son for the spiritual struggle of
a recluse. After seven years he believed himself possessed
of perfect truth, and assumed the title of Buddha, 'the
enlightened.' He is represented as having received a
sudden illumination as he sat under the Bo-tree, or ' tree
of knowledge,' at Bodhgaya or Buddha-Gaya. For
twenty-eight or, as later narratives give it, forty-nine
days he was variously tempted by Mara. One of his doubts
was whether to keep for himself the knowledge won, or to
share it. Love triumphed, and he began to preach, at first
at Benares. For forty-four years he preached in the region
of Benares and Behar. Primitive Buddhism is only to be
gathered by inference from the literature of a later time.
Buddha did not array himself against the old religion. The
doctrines were rather the outgrowth of those of certain
Brahmanical schools. His especial concern was salvation
from sorrow, and so from existence. There are "four noble
truths": (1) existence is suffering; (2) the cause of pain
is desire, (3) cessation of pain is possible through the
suppression of desire; (4) the way to this is the
knowledge and observance of the "good law " of Buddha. The
end is Nirvana, the cessation of existence. Buddhism was
preached in the vulgar tongue, and had a popular
literature and an elaborately organized monastic and
missionary system. It made its way into Afghanistan,
Bactriana., Tibet, and China. It passed away in India not
from Brahman persecution, but rather from internal causes,
such as its too abstract nature, too morbid view of life,
relaxed discipline, and overgrowth of monasticism, and
also because Shivaism and Vishnuism employed many of its
own weapons more effectively. The system has been
variously modified in dogma and rites in the many
countries to which it has spread. It is supposed to number
about 850,000,000 of adherents, who are principally in
Ceylon, Tibet, China, and Japan.
[Century Dict. 1906.]