Buddha
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Buddha. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
boo'da, the founder of Buddhism. The name Buddha means "the enlightened," and is in reality a generic term denoting a deified teacher. Buddhists claim that many Buddhas have lived and taught. The one to whom the name came to be applied specifically, because of his great work as a reformer, was named in reality Siddhartha Gautama. He is supposed to have been born about five hundred fifty years before Christ. We have little knowledge of his life which can be called historical, but with the few facts are interwoven many traditions faithfully believed by Buddhists. He was the son of a Hindu prince who lived a short distance north of Benares, India. He was born in a pleasant garden by the river side, while his mother was on a journey to the home of her father. Many stories are told of the miracles attending his birth, of the prophecies pronounced when his father first looked upon the child, and of how, as the mother continued her journey, the baby was protected from the heat of the sun by cool shadows which moved above his head. Siddhartha grew to be a handsome and intelligent youth, but too thoughtful to suit his parents' ideas of a happy prince. They therefore married him at an early age to his young cousin, the beautiful daughter of a neighboring king or raja. It appears that the young man now went to the other extreme; for we read of his relatives complaining to his father that he lived for pleasure only, and would be incapable of leading an army, should war arise. Gautama, hearing of this, appointed a day when his prowess should be tested. At this trial the young man proved himself superior, not only in manly exercises, but in knowledge, to all competitors. Complaints ceased, and Gautama pursued his own course. In the midst of his pleasures, however, he observed many things which made him ponder deeply. He saw a man bent with age. Asking Channa, his charioteer, why such things should be, he was told that age is the common fate of all. He saw a man afflicted with a loathsome disease, and Channa told him that all must suffer. He saw a corpse, and learned that all must die. Pondering these things, and striving to solve the mysteries of life and death, Gautama at last left his family and lived for years as a recluse. For some time he practiced the most severe penances and self-denial, but he learned the uselessness of such practices, and finally, while sitting under the "Bo-tree," known from that time as the tree of wisdom, he became "enlightened." When he had thus evolved a system of religious beliefs and a code of morality satisfying to his own mind, he began to teach his doctrines and soon made many converts. There is an old Buddhist hymn which relates how an acquaintance met Buddha as he started out with the joy of his new religion shining in his face, and asked him where he was going. His answer was, "I am going to the city of Benares to establish the kingdom of righteousness, to give light to those enshrouded in darkness, and open the gate of immortality to men." Buddha made it his custom to gather his disciples about him for instruction during the rainy season. When that was past, they separated for the purpose of spreading the new doctrines. According to tradition Buddha lived to be almost eighty years of age, continuing to teach until the end. His last words were spoken to his faithful disciples. Asiatic Art. Dance staff of the Batta tribe of Sumatra. Bronze image of Buddha 2026 Editor's Note: Buddhism now counts perhaps half a billion followers. The most violent modern chapter came in 2001, when the Taliban dynamited the colossal Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan — 1,500-year-old statues carved into a cliff — an act of destruction that appalled the world and foreshadowed much that followed. (Ed: BR 2026-06-01)
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a man possessed of infinite or infallible knowledge; a deified religious teacher. There was said to be a series of them, a number having come and gone before Gautama, the personage described below. When no Buddha is on earth, the true religion gradually decays, but it flourishes in pristine vigor when a new Buddha is raised up. He is not, however, entitled at once to that honorable appellation; it is only after he has put forth arduous exertions for the faith that he attains to Buddhahood. Most of the Buddhas preceding the personage described below appear to have been purely fabulous. His immediate predecessor, Kasyapa or Kassapo, may have been a real person. The word is chiefly applied to a distinguished personage of Aryan descent, whose father MAILE was king of Kapilavastu, an old Hindu kingdom at the foot of the Nepaulese Mountains, about 100 miles N. of Benares. He was of the Sakhya family, and the class of the Gautamas, as, hence his distamas tinguished son was often called Sakhya Muni, or Saint Sakya, and Gautama, or Guadama. The Chinese call him Fo, which is the name Buddha softened in the pronunciation. The Aryan invaders of India looked down with contempt upon the Turanian inhabitants of that land, and, to keep their blood uncontaminated, developed the system of caste. Buddha, whose human sympathy was wide-reaching, broke through this old restraint, and, though he was himself an Aryan, preached the equality of races, a doctrine which the oppressed Turanians eagerly embraced. By the common account he was born in 622 B. C. attained to Buddhahood in 580, and died in 543, or, in the opinion of some, in 477 B. C. and other years than these, such as 400 B. C., or even lower, have been contended for. Buddha became deified by his admiring followers. Those images of an Oriental god made of white marble, so frequently seen in museums and in private houses, are representations of Buddha.