‘Vessantara (afterwards Buddha) was so liberal that he gave to every one who asked. Among his possessions was a white elephant, which had the power of bringing down rain whenever it was needed. At last he gave away this also to a neighbouring country suffering from drought. This so incensed his own people that they persuaded the king his father to banish him with his wife and two children to the forest. They set out in a chariot drawn by horses. First he gave away the horses and next the chariot to Brāhmans who begged for them. Then when another Brāhman asked for the children, Vessantara gave them up too, saying: “May I for this act become a Buddha!” In short his sufferings and theirs in banishment, and his generosity to every one, led to his recall with great rejoicings. When he died he was born again in the Tushita heaven, whence he descended as a white elephant into the womb of Māyā, and was born as Gautama’ (p. 23). Another wise man of the East, who lived long before Gautama, spoke of ‘the path of the just shining more and more unto the perfect day.’ Of this kind of progressive advance towards higher planes of perfection, the Indian sage knew nothing. Nor to the Buddha, of course, would the Christian idea of ‘original sin,’ or of imputed Perfection have conveyed any meaning whatever. With Gautama, righteousness and unrighteousness, holiness and sin, were the product of a man’s own acts. They were produced by no one but himself, and they were merely troublesome forces (see p. 124) causing, in the one case, a man’s re-birth either in one of the heavens or in higher earthly corporeal forms, and, in the other, his re-birth in one of the hells or in lower corporeal forms. ‘Not in the heavens,’ says the Dhamma-pada (127), ‘not in the midst of the sea, not if thou hidest thyself in the clefts of the mountains, wilt thou find a place where thou canst escape the force resulting from thy evil actions.’ Here also is the substance of a passage in the Deva-dūta-sutta (translated by Dr. Oldenberg):— ‘Do not relatives and friends welcome a man who has been long travelling, when he returns safely to his home? Even so, a righteous man, when he passes from this world to another, is welcomed by his good works, as by friends. ‘Through the six states of transmigration does the power of our actions lead us. A life in the heavens awaits the good. The wardens of hell drag the wicked before the king of hell, Yama, who says to them:—“Did you not, when on earth, see the five divine messengers, sent to warn you—the child, the old man, the sick, the criminal suffering punishment, and the dead corpse?” ‘And the wicked man answers:—“I did see them.” ‘And didst thou not think within thyself:—“I also am subject to birth, old age, death. Let me be careful to do good works?” ‘And the wicked man answers:—“I did not, sire; I neglected in my folly to think of these things.”