‘A. Whoever believes in any other God but this is an infidel, and shall suffer the punishment of hell.’ In another extract the disciples are told that in the world to come they shall receive the return according to their actions. 23. The next reform of the Brahminical system had reference to its social characteristics, and was occasioned by the insupportable tyranny of the priesthood. The reformer, a young prince, was born about 500 years B.C., and from his life and doctrines received the name of Buddha, or the Enlightened. After having learned from various famous Brahmans, he came to the conclusion that their austerities and doctrines could neither free men from the miseries of this life nor from the fear of death. From this stage Buddha passed into the belief that all we see is vanity—a delusion, a dream—and that the highest wisdom consists in perceiving this, and in desiring to enter into Nirvâ_n_a, or, in other words, to be blown out like a flame. It would seem from these words that Buddha himself regarded annihilation rather than immortality as the _summum bonum_; but no account of Buddhism would be satisfactory which did not pay special regard to the notion so widely diffused in heathenism, that matter is the source of all evil. To be liberated from _matter_ is to be liberated from _evil_; and this would seem to be the fundamental thought in the Nirvâ_n_a in all its different senses. But however this may be, we know that, allied to these extreme metaphysical opinions, Buddha inculcated a moral code which is one of the purest the world has ever known. M. Laboulaye says, ‘It is difficult to comprehend how men not assisted by revelation could have soared so high;’ and M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire does not hesitate to assert that ‘with the sole exception of Christ, there is not amongst the founders of religion a more pure or touching figure than that of Buddha.’ 24. In process of time, among the followers of the Buddhist religion, the word Nirvâ_n_a came to have a very different meaning from that which it had at first. Buddha was himself worshipped as a divinity, and his Nirvâ_n_a came to denote a state in which there was a total absence of pain, or in other words an Elysium. In illustration of this we may quote the account given by Max Müller of the dying words of Hiouen-Thsang, a famous pilgrim from China to the shrine of Buddha, who died in the year of our era 664:— ‘I desire,’ he said, ‘that whatever merits I may have gained by good works may fall upon other people. May I be born again with them in the heaven of the blessed, be admitted to the family of Mi-le, and serve the Buddha of the future who is full of kindness and affection. When I descend again upon earth, to pass through other forms of existence, I desire at every new birth to fulfil my duties towards Buddha, and arrive at the last at the highest and most perfect intelligence.’