Then the king knew what manner of son this was, and he perceived that the soothsayers had spoken truth. Of the two alternative futures which they had foretold for him, the king would have preferred that he should become the monarch of the whole world. But the gods knew better. They knew that he was to be not the monarch of the world, but its freer: the sacrifice and renunciation of his life were to strike off from millions the shackles of sin and misery. They knew, moreover, that all the king’s endeavours to turn the Blessed One from his purpose would be vain; yet must the king needs try, and so throughout the prince’s youth every temptation that riches and luxury and pleasure could offer was put in his way. In the life of the Buddha it is easy to separate the wheat from the chaff, the facts from the fairy-tales. The great central truth remains untarnished in spite of all, and so in telling the story we, seeking to show the inspiration of Oriental mysticism, need hardly rob it of the mystic glamour of that poetical embroidery in which the rich imagination of Indian priests has enwrapped it. Seven days after the birth of her son the beautiful Queen Maya died, and the babe was given over to the care of her younger sister, Prajapati Gautami, who was also one of King Suddhōdana’s wives. It is strange that in his picturesque Buddhist poem, “The Light of Asia,” Sir Edwin Arnold should have omitted many of the legends with which he must have been familiar, and which would well have fitted the rather sensuous character of his verse. Moreover, he mixes up the stories of the two wives of Prince Siddartha, Yasōdhara and Gopā, and altogether omits any mention of the birth in the Lumbini Garden. Now the Lumbini Garden is one of those places connected with the Buddhist records which have been identified with the utmost certainty. The early Chinese pilgrims were shown the spot, and were careful with accuracy to describe the monuments which now, after all these centuries, the Babu Chandra Mukherji has been able to verify. On the spot where stood the sacred tree under which, grasping one of its boughs, Maya the Queen gave birth to her son, contemporary piety, or perhaps at latest that of King Asōka, who lived two hundred years afterwards, erected a chapel in which stood a sculpture portraying the nativity. The ruins of the sacred building may yet be seen, and, much damaged, the stone image which it enshrined—a barbaric but expressive group. Hard by there still runs the little stream which Hsüan Chwang tells us was called the “river of oil,” a name which it still bears. Twenty or twenty-five paces from the sacred tree is the tank in which Maya bathed, still full of pure water.