Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions that follow:
At twelve, he was sent away for schooling in the Hindu sacred scriptures and four years later he returned home to marry a princess. They had a son and lived for ten years as befitted royalty.
1. Who does ‘He’ here stand for?
2. What did he study for four years?
3. What does the phrase ‘As befitted royalty’ mean?
1. He stands for Siddhartha Gautama.
2. He studied the sacred Hindu scriptures for four years.
3. ‘As befitted royalty’ means that they lived as a king and queen should.
Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions that follow.
These sights so moved him that he at once became a beggar and went out into the world to seek enlightenment concerning the sorrows he had witnessed. He wandered for seven years and finally sat down under a fig tree, where he vowed to stay until enlightenment came.
1. What were these sights?
2. How did these sights influence him?
3. Find a word from the passage which means the same as ‘illumination’.
Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions that follow.
Enlightened after seven days, he renamed the tree the Bo Tree (Tree of Wisdom) and began to teach and to share his new understandings. At that point he became known as the Buddha (The Awakened or The Enlightened).
1. What enlightenment came over him?
2. Where did he sit down for meditation?
3. Give the meaning of the phrase ‘be awakened’.
Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions that follow.
At length, Kisa Gotami met a man who replied to her request : “I cannot give thee medicine for thy child, but I know a physician who can.” And the girl said: “Pray tell me, sir; who is it ?” And the man replied, “Go to Salyamuni, the Buddha.”
1. What was the cause for Kisa’s suffering?
2. What did she do after her only son died?
3. Pick out a phrase from the passage which means the same as ‘finally’.
Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions that follow:
At about age twenty-five, the Prince, heretofore shielded from the suffering of the world, while out hunting chanced upon a sick man, then an aged man, then a funeral procession, and finally a monk begging for alms.
1. Who does the prince refer to in the passage?
2. What did he see at this time of his life?
3. Give the meaning of the phrase ‘chanced upon’.
