Approaching the question of the hour in this spirit of precaution,
what do we find are the probabilities respecting the life of Sākya
Muni? Who was he? When did he live? How did he live? What did he
teach? A most careful comparison of authorities and analysis of
evidence establishes, I think, the following data:

1. He was the son of a king.

2. He lived between six and seven centuries before Christ.

3. He resigned his royal state and went to live in the jungle, and
among the lowest and most unhappy classes, so as to learn the secret
of human pain and misery by personal experience: tested every known
austerity of the Hinḍū ascetics and excelled them all in his power
of endurance: sounded every depth of woe in search of the means to
alleviate it: and at last came out victorious, and showed the world
the way to salvation.

4. What he taught may be summed up in a few words, as the perfume of
many roses may be distilled into a few drops of _attar_: Everything in
the world of Matter is unreal; the only reality is in the world of
Spirit. Emancipate yourselves from the tyranny of the former; strive
to attain the latter. The Rev. Samuel Beal, in his _Catena of
Buḍḍhist Scriptures from the Chinese_ puts it differently. "The
idea underlying the Buddhist religious system is," he says, "simply
this: 'all is vanity'. Earth is a show, and Heaven is a vain reward."
Primitive Buḍḍhism was engrossed, absorbed, by one thought--the
vanity of finite existence, the priceless value of the one condition
of Eternal Rest.