Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c10.t3.12

c10.t3.12

For to but a few chosen ones, thus the Doctrine says, was it given, already in this age to attain the goal as disciples of the Son of the Sakya house, and short term was allotted to the existence of the Church on earth. When in the cloister-gardens at Râjagaha and Sâvatthi the discourses of Buddha were recited among the assembled brethren, they bethought themselves also of the prophecy: “Not a long time, Ânanda, will holy living remain preserved; five hundred years, Ânanda, will the Doctrine of the truth abide.” Who then foresaw, that after five hundred years the Church of the Buddhists would overspread India, and that its missionaries far beyond India, traversing the ocean, crossing the snowy ranges of the Himalaya, wandering through the deserts of Central Asia, would bring the faith of Buddha to nations, whose name even was not then named in India—to nations among whom this faith survived and still survives to this day, while in its parent-land the spirit of the Indian people, which in endless play dashed into ever new spheres of thought and fancy, which relegated to nothingness the wreck of ruined worlds and rebuilt lost beauty, not always in greater stateliness,* has long since permitted the Doctrine of Buddha to decay.