These words of the good gods in the heavens truthfully echo the motive that stirred Çâkyamuni to take up his gigantic task of universal salvation, and we are unable here as before to perceive a particle of the nihilistic speculation which is supposed to characterise Nirvâna. The Buddha from the very first of his religious course searched after the light that will illuminate {336} the whole universe and dispel the darkness of nescience. What enlightenment, then, did the Buddha, pursuing his first object, finally gain? What truth was it that he is said to have discovered under the Bodhi tree after six years’ penance and deep meditation? As is universally recognised, it was no more than the Fourfold Noble Truth and the Twelve Chains of Dependence, which are acknowledged by the Mahâyânists as well as by the Hînayânists as the essentially original teachings of the Buddha. What then was his subjective state when he discovered these truths? How did he feel in his inmost being after this intellectual triumph over egoistic thoughts and passions? According to the Southern tradition, the famous Hymn of Victory is said to be his utterance on this occasion. It reads (The _Dharmapada_, 153): “Many a life to transmigrate, Long quest, no rest, hath been my fate, Tent-designer inquisitive for; Painful birth from state to state. “Tent-designer, I know thee now; Never again to build art thou; Quite out are all thy joyful fires, Rafter broken and roof-tree gone; Into the vast my heart goes on, Gains Eternity--dead desires.”[138] In this Hymn of Victory, the “tent-designer” means {337} the ego that is supposed to be a subtle existence behind our mental experiences. As was pointed out elsewhere the negative phase of Buddhism consists in the eradication of this ego-substratum or the “designer” of eternal transmigration. The Buddha now finds out that this ego-soul is a fantasmagoria and has no final existence; and with this insight his ego-centric desires that troubled him so long are eternally dead; he feels the breaking up of their limitations; he is absorbed in the Eternal Vast, in which we all live and move and have our being. No shadow is perceptible here that suggests anything of an absolute nothingness supposed to be the attribute of Nirvâna. Before proceeding further, let us see what the Mahâyâna tradition says concerning this point. The tradition varies in this case as in many others. According to Beal’s _Romantic History of Buddha_, which is a translation of a Chinese version of the _Buddhacarita_ (_Fo pen hing ching_),[139] Buddha is reported to have exclaimed this: