BUDDHISM

Buddhism is a religion started in the name of Lord Buddha. The religion of Buddha is a religion which eschewed all speculation about God and the universe and set itself solely to the work of salvation, the end of which was the merging of the individual in the unity of being, and the "way" to which was the mortification of all private passion and desire which mortification, when finished, was the Buddhist Nirvâna.

This is the primary doctrine of the Buddhist faith, which erelong became a formality, as all faiths of the kind, or of this high order, ever tend to do. Buddha is not answerable for this, but his followers, who in three successive councils resolved it into a system of formulæ, which Buddha, knowing belike how the letter killeth and only the spirit giveth life, never attempted to do. Buddha wrote none himself, but in some 300 years after his death his teachings assumed a canonical form, under the name of Tripitaka, or triple basket, as it is called. Tripitaka is the sacred Buddhist literature.

It started as a protest against Brahmanical religion and from the first was a proselytising religion; it at one time overran the whole of India, and though it is now in small favour there, it is, in such form as it has assumed, often a highly beggarly one, understood to be the religion of a great number of the human race.

It has eightfold path, which is also known as Middle Path.

It was once the state religion of India under Ashoka.

This religion is prevalent in many Asian countries.

Later it was divided into two sects - Mahayan, and Hinayan.

Jataka stories are the stories told by Lord Buddha about his former births.