The Creed of Half Japan, by Arthur Lloyd, , at sacred-texts.com
The Buddha and his Greatest Disciple Thanks to the labours of
many students of the Buddhist books, both Pali and Sanskrit, we
are able to form a vivid mind's eye picture of the ministerial
life of the Founder of Buddhism; indeed, the general indications
of time are so wonderfully precise that we can trace his labours
year by year for quite one-half of the forty-six years which his
ministry occupied. There is a gap of about fifteen years near
the end of his career for which we have no precise sequence of
events; but even here we are not left entirely in the dark, for
there are many indications given of the troublous days through
which India in general, and the Buddhist community in
particular, was then passing. 1 [paragraph continues] We are
shown the successes which attended on S’akyamuni's first
preaching. Conversions were numerous and rapid, converts of all
ages and both sexes flocked into his community from every class
of society, and were wel