Soon the time came when it was fitting that he should take a wife, and upon this the king and his councillors based their last hope of turning his mind to earthly things. We are told that the prince thought long and anxiously before he could assure himself that marriage would not engross him to such an extent as to rob him of the calm which was needful for the contemplation and the search for wisdom, to which he was minded to dedicate his life. In the end he consented, but he stipulated that the wife chosen for him should be no ordinary woman, but such a one as might be a spiritual helpmate to him. Caste was not to weigh in the scale. She might be a Kshatriya, a Vaisiya (householder), or even a Sudra (serf). That was of no account. The mind alone, or perhaps rather what we should call the soul, must be the test. It is difficult to imagine the consternation which, if it be true, as it probably is, such a declaration on the part of a royal prince would arouse among the bigoted Brahmans of his father’s court. There was, however, no need to fear a degrading marriage, for when the maidens of the noble Shakya clan were brought together, Yasōdhara was chosen for her beauty and her sweet nature. And greatly blessed the prince was in his choice, for she believed in him as Kadijah did in Mohammed during the humble days of his life as camel driver, and when after his long self-banishment in the wilderness, he at last entered upon his ministration as Buddha, she with her young son Rahula, followed him as a disciple. But many years were to pass—years fraught with great happenings—before that should take place. It is my misfortune that I have no first-hand knowledge derived from the study in the originals of those books in which the Buddhist legend is enchased. I am ignorant of Sanscrit, ignorant of Pali—as ignorant, indeed, as those holy monks and priests who drone out their texts without any spark of light as to the meaning of the words which they recite by rote. But, after all, I am not attempting to write any learned treatise on the religion of Buddha, but simply to give some account as best I may of the legends which satisfy the spiritual cravings of millions of those people among whom I have spent several years of my life—legends which have inspired the art of the Far East just as our own beautiful religion has inspired that of the West, and which for old sake’s sake, I have tried to represent in my own Veluvana.