Excerpt from The Story of the Buddha
Before the days of books, records of historical events were handed down by word of mouth. It was therefore but natural that, as time passed and a story came to be often repeated, many details should gradually have been added to the original narrative. Thus in all histories of very early times we find fact and legend mingled together.
So it is with the story I am about to tell you. When the narrative of the Buddhas life was told again and again, in countries far removed from the scenes where the events had taken place, tales of wonders and miracles were added to the first simple story. Many of these legends, which are very beautiful, were intended to be understood as allegories, and stories told in this way have always been favourites with Eastern people.
You will see that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the facts from the legends which were added in later years. But, after all, why should we trouble ourselves about these things? We know that the events of chief importance in the Buddhas beautiful life are historical facts, and that is all that really matters.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Story of the Buddha (Classic Reprint) (Edith Holland)