16 APRIL 1927, Page 17

" I was delicate, 0 monks, extremely delicate, excessively delicate,

I used no sandal wood that was not Benares ; my dress was of Benares cloth, my tunic, my underwear and cloak." So Buddha speaks of his early life according to the Pali Canon. On that night of the full moon, two thousand Janes ago, when his eyes were opened to the woes of the world and he left wife and child and rode out on his white horse to seek the noble eightfold path," he began a life which has been the subject of endless commentary and discussion and from which there is much that may. yet be learned, not perhaps from books, but from living men who are inheritors of Gautama's austere tradition. In The Life of Buddha, as Legend and History (Kegan Paul, 12s. 6d.), Dr. Thomas has produced an authoritative account of all that is known of the life of the great teacher. Space compels us to refer to this important work only in a paragraph, but we would recommend it to all interested in Eastern philosophy.