Produced by Louise Davies, The Universal Digital Library (http://www.ulib.org) and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net TRÜBNER'S ORIENTAL SERIES. THE LIFE OR LEGEND OF GAUDAMA _THE BUDDHA OF THE BURMES_ With Annotations. THE WAYS TO NEIBBAN, AND NOTICE ON THE PHONGYIES OR BURMESE MONKS. BY THE RIGHT REVEREND P. BIGANDET, BISHOP OF RAMATHA, VICAR APOSTOLIC OF AVA AND PEGU _IN TWO VOLUMES._ VOL. I. Fourth Edition. LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO. LTD. DRYDEN HOUSE, GERRARD STREET, W. 1911. _The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved._ Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh ADVERTISEMENT TO THIRD EDITION. The origin of the present work dates back to the years 1852, 1853, 1854, and 1855, when portions of it appeared in the "Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia," edited by J. R. Logan of Penang (vols. vi., vii., viii., and ix.). The first complete edition was printed at Rangoon in Burmah in 1858, and a second, much enlarged, at the same place in 1866. Very few copies of either of these editions reached Europe, and both are entirely out of print. The present third edition--a faithful reprint of the second--issued, with Bishop Bigandet's sanction, for the benefit of European and American scholars and readers, will, therefore, it is hoped, be gladly received. Buddhism and Gautama, the faith and its founder, whose followers are between four and five hundred millions of the human race, were comparatively unknown in Europe but a generation ago, and yet this great faith had continued for four and twenty centuries to spread over the vast lands of the East, taking deep and enduring root in all, from Bhotan, Nepaul, and Ceylon, over Further India to China Proper, Mongolia, Mantchooria, Tibet, and Japan.