The following parable is an example: ‘As the peasant sows the seed but cannot say: the grain shall swell to-day, to-morrow germinate, so also it is with the disciple; he must obey the precepts, practise meditation, study the doctrine; he cannot say to-day or to-morrow, I shall be delivered. Again: as when a herd of deer lives in a forest a man comes who opens for them a false path and the deer suffer hurt; and another comes who opens a safe path and the deer thrive; so when men live among pleasures the evil one comes and opens the false eightfold path. Then comes the perfect one and opens the safe eightfold path of right belief, etc.’ (p. 44, Oldenberg, 191, 192). Six rival heretical teachers are alluded to. His chief opponent was his cousin Devadatta, who set up a school of his own, and is said to have plotted against the Buddha’s life. His efforts failed (Ćulla-vagga VII), and he himself came to an untimely end. Possibly he may have belonged to the rival Jaina sect (Nigaṇṭha) of naked ascetics, of which the great leader was Vardhamāna Mahāvīra Nāta-putta (=Jñāti-putra). Gautama’s teaching gained the day. It claimed universality, and was aptly symbolized by a wheel rolling among all alike. Yet at first it had no attractions for the poor and the child-like. By degrees, a fuller system, adapted in an ascending scale to laymen, novices, monks, nuns, and Arhats, was developed—a system which had its abstruse doctrines suited to men of philosophical minds, as well as its plain practical side. This constituted the Buddhist Dharma, which was ultimately collected in certain sacred books to be next described. LECTURE III. _The Law (Dharma) and Sacred Scriptures of Buddhism._ Probably most educated persons are aware that Buddhists have their own sacred scriptures, like Hindūs, Pārsīs, Confucianists, Muhammadans, Jews, and Christians. It is not, however, so generally known that in one important particular these Buddhist scriptures, constituting the Tri-piṭaka (p. 61), differ wholly from other sacred books. They lay no claim to supernatural inspiration. Whatever doctrine is found in them was believed to be purely human—that is, was held to be the product of man’s own natural faculties working naturally. The Tri-piṭaka was never like the Veda of the Brāhmans, believed to be the very ‘breath of God’[19]; the same care, therefore, was not taken to preserve every sound; and when at last it was written down the result was a more scholastic production than the Veda.