[35] Buddha, or the sage (which the Chinese, by the metamorphosis made by their pronunciation of most foreign proper names, have changed first into _Fuh-hi_, and then into _Fuh_, or _Ho_), is not the personal name of the great saint, the first preacher of the religion of the Buddhists, but a title of honor given to him after he had attained to eminent sanctity. According to the concurrent traditions of the Buddhists in various parts of Asia, he was the son of a king of central India, Suddho-dana, meaning in Sanscrit pure-eating king, or eater of pure food, which the Chinese have translated into their language by _Zung-fung-wang_. His original name was _Lêh-ta_; after he became a priest he was called _Sakia-mouni_, that is, devotee of the race of Sakia, whence the appellation _Shaka_, by which he is commonly known in Japan, and also the name _Shaku_, applied to the patriarch or head of the Buddhist church. Another Sanscrit patronymic of Buddha is _Gautama_, which in different Buddhist nations has, in conjunction with other epithets applied to him, been variously changed and corrupted. Thus among the Siamese he is called _Summana-kodom_. The Buddhist mythology includes several Buddhas who preceded Sakia-mouni, and the first of whom, _Adi-Buddha_, or the first Buddha, was, when nothing else was, being in fact the primal deity and origin of all things. It seems to be this first Buddha who is worshipped in Japan under the name of _Amida_, and whose priests form the most numerous and influential of the Buddhist orders. Siebold seems inclined to regard them as pure monotheists. The birth of Shaka is fixed by the Japanese annalists, or at least by the book of chronology quoted in a previous note, in the twenty-sixth year of the emperor Chaou-wang, of the Chinese Chew Dynasty, 1027 B. C. 1006 B. C., he fled from his father’s house to become a priest; 998 B. C., he reached the highest step of philosophical knowledge; 949 B. C., being seventy-nine years of age, he entered into _Nirvana_, that is, died. He was succeeded by a regular succession of Buddhist patriarchs, of whom twenty-eight were natives of Hindustan. The twenty-eighth emigrated to China, A. D. 490, where he had five Chinese successors. Under the second of these, A. D. 552, Buddhism was introduced into Japan. A. D. 713, the sixth and the last Chinese patriarch died, since which the Chinese Buddhists, and those who have received the religion from them, seem not to have acknowledged any general, but only a local, head in each country. [36] In connection with this chapter, read “The Religions of Japan” (Griffis).—EDR. [37] For an account of the Japanese language, literature, etc., see “A Handbook of Modern Japan” (Clement).—EDR.