"The Buddhas who have been, are, and will be, are more numerous than the grains of sand on the banks of the Ganges." - Aparimita-Dharani.
The name Buddha, 'the Knower,' 'the Enlightened,' 'the Wake,' is the appellation by which the wandering preaching friar Gautama became best known to his disciples. Of this man we are able to say with some certainty that he was born in the year 563 B.C. and died in 483 B.C. He was the heir of a ruling house of the Sakyas, whose little kingdom, a rich irrigated plain between the Nepalese foot-hills and the river Rapti, lay to the north-east of the present province of Oudh. To the south-west lay the larger and more powerful kingdom of the Kosalas, to whom the Sakyas owed a nominal allegiance. The Buddha's personal name was Siddhattha, his family name Gautama, his father's name Suddhodana, his mother's Maya. It is only in later legend that Suddhodana is represented as a great king; most likely he was in fact a wealthy knight and landowner.
Siddhattha's mother died seven days after his birth, and her sister Mahapajapati, another wife of Suddhodana, filled the place of mother to the young prince. He was brought up in Kapilavatthu, a busy provincial capital; he was trained in martial exercises, riding, and outdoor life generally, and in all knightly accomplishments, but it is not indicated in the early books that he was accomplished in Brahamanical lore. In accordance with the custom of well-to-do youths, he occupied three different houses in winter, summer, and the rainy season, these houses being provided with beautiful pleasure gardens and a good deal of simple luxury. It is recorded that he was married, and had a son, by name Rahula, who afterwards became his disciple.
Siddhattha experienced the intellectual and spiritual unrest of his age, and felt a growing dissatisfaction with the world of pleasure in which he moved, a dissatisfaction rooted in the fact of its transience and uncertainty, and of man's subjection to all the ills of mortality. Suddhodana feared that these thoughts would lead to the loss of his son, who would become a hermit, as was the tendency of the thinkers of the time; and these fears were well founded, for in spite of every pleasure and luxury that could be devised to withold him, Siddhattha ultimately left his home to adopt the 'homeless life' of the 'Wanderer,' a seeker after truth that should avail to liberate all men from the bondage of mortality. Such enlightenment he found after years of search. Thereafter, during a long ministry as a wandering preacher, he taught the Four Ariyan Truths and the Eightfold Path; attracting many disciples, he founded a monastic order as a refuge for higher men, the seekers for everlasting freedom and unshakable peace. He died at the age of eighty.
After his death his disciples gathered together the "Words of the Englightened One," and from this nucleus there gew up in the course of a few centuries the whole body of the Pali canon, and ultimately, under slightly different interpretation, the whole mass of the Mahayana Sutras. That so much of the story represents literal fact is not only very possible, but extremely probable; for there is nothing here which is not in perfect accordance with the life of that age and the natural development of Indian thought. We know, for example, that many groups of wandering ascetics were engaged in the same quest, and that they were largely recruited from an intellectual and social aristocracy to whom the pretensions of Brahmanical priestcraft were no longer acceptable, and who were no less out of sympathy with the multitudinous cults of popular animism. We know the name of at least one other princely ascetic, Vardhamana, a contemporary of the Buddha, and the founder of the monastic system of the Jainas.
The Legendary Buddha.
But while it is easy to extract from the Buddhist books such a nucleus of fact as is outlined above, the materials for amore circumstantial biography of the Buddha, extensive as they are, cannot be regarded as historical in the scientific usage of the word. What is, however, far more important than the record of fact, is the expression of all that the facts, as understood, implied to those to whom they were a living inspiration; and it is just this expression of what the life of Buddha meant to Buddhists, or Bauddhas, as the followers of Gautama are more properly called, that we find in the legendary lives, such as the Lalitavistara, which is familiar to Western readers in Sir Edwin Arnold's The Light of Asia. Here, then we shall relate the life of Buddha in some detail, from the various sources indicated, regardless of the fact that these presuppose a doctrinal development which can only have taken place after the Buddha's death; for the miraculous and mythological elements are always very transparent and artistic.
The history of the Buddha begins with the resolve of the individual Brahmen Sumedha, long ago, to become a Buddha in some future birth, that he might spread abroad saving truth for the help of suffering humanity. Countless ages ago this same Sumedha, retiring one day to the upper chamber of his house, seated himself and fell into thought: "Behold, I am subject to birth, to decay, to disease, and to death; it is right, then, that I should strive to win the great deathless Nibbana, which is tranquil, and free from birth and decay, sickness, and woe and weal. Surely there must be a road that leads to Nibbana and releases man from existence." Accordingly, he gave away all his wealth and adopted the life of a hermit in the forest.
At that time Dipankara Buddha appeared in the world, and attained enlightenment. It happened one day that Dipankara Buddha was to pass that way, and men were preparing the road for him. Sumedha asked and received permission to join in the work, and not only did he do so, but when Dipankara came Sumedha laid himself down in the mud, so that the Buddha might walk upon his body without soiling the feet. Then Dipankara's attention was aroused and he became aware of Sumedha's intention to become a Buddha, and, looking countless ages into the future, he saw that he would become a Buddha of the name of Gautama, and he prophesied accordingly. Thereupon Sumedha rejoiced, and, rejecting the immediate prospect of becoming an Arahat, as the disciple of Dipankara, "Let me rather," he said, "like Dipankara, having risen to the supreme knowledge of the truth, enable all men to enter the ship of truth, and thus I may bear them over the Sea of Existence, and then only let me realize Nibbana myself.
Incarnation of the Buddha.
When Dipankara with all his followers had passed by, Sumedha examined the Ten Perfections indispensable to Buddhahood, and determined to practise them in his future births. So it came to pass, until in the last of these births the Bodhisatta was reborn as Prince Vessantara, who exhibited the Perfection of Supernatural Generosity, and in due time passed away and dwelt in the Heaven of Delight. When the time had come for the Bodhisatta to return to earth for the last time, the deities of the ten thousand world-systems assembled together, and, approaching the Bodhisatta in the Heaven of Delight, said: "Now has the moment come, O Blessed One, for thy Buddhahood; now has the time, O Blessed One, arrived!" Then the Bodhisatta considered the time, the continent, the district, the tribe, and the mother, and, having determined these, he assented, saying: "The time has come, O Blessed Ones, for me to become a Buddha." And even as he was walking there in the Grove of Gladness he departed thence and was conceived in the womb of the lady Maha Maya.
The manner of the conception is explained as follows. At the time of the midsummer festival in Kapilavatthu, Maha Maya, the lady of Suddhodana, lay on her coach and dreamed a dream. She dreamt that the Four Guardians of the Quarters lifted her up and bore her away to the Himalayas, and there she was bathed in the Anotatta lake and lay down to rest on a heavenly couch within a golden mansion on Silver Hill. Then the Bodhisatta, who had become a beautiful white elephant, bearing in his trunk a white lotus flower, approached from the North, and seemed to touch her right side and to enter the womb. The next day when she awoke she related the dream to her lord, and it was interpreted by the Brahmans as follows: that the lady had conceived a man-child who, should he adopt the life of a householder, would become a Universal Monarch; but if he adopted the religious life he would become a Buddha, removing from the world the veils of ignorance and sin.
It should be told also that at the moment of the incarnation the heavens and the earth showed signs, the dumb spoke, the lame walked, all men began to speak kindly, musical instruments played of themselves, the earth was covered with lotus flowers, and lotuses descended from the sky, and every tree put forth its flowers. From the moment of the incarnation, moreover, four devas guarded the Bodhisatta and his mother, to shield them from all harm. The mother was not weary, and she could perceive the child in her womb as plainly as one may see the thread in a transparent gem. The Lady Maha Maya carried the Bodhisatta thus for ten lunar months; at the end of that time she expressed a wish to visit her family in Devadaha; and she set out on the journey. On the way from Kapilavatthu to Devadaha there is a pleasure-grove of Sal-trees belonging to the people of both cities, and at the time of the queen's journey it was filled with fruits and flowers. Here the queen desired to rest, and she was carried to the greatest of the Sal-trees and stood beneath it. As she raised her hand to take hold of one of its branches she knew her time had come, and so standing and holding the branch of the Sal-tree she was delivered. Four Brahma devas received the child in a golden net, and showed it to the mother, saying: "Rejoice, O Lady! a great son is born to thee." The child stood upright, and took seven strides and cried: "I am supreme in the world. This is my last birth: henceforth there shall be no more birth for me!"
At one and the same time there came into being the Seven Connatal Ones, viz., the mother of Rahula, Ananda the favourite disciple, Channa, the attendant, Kanthaka, the horse, Kaludayi, the minister, the great Bodhi tree and the vases of treasure.
Kala Devala.
When the Bodhisatta was born there was great rejoicing in the heaven of the Thirty-three Gods. At that time also a certain hermit by name Kala Devala, an adept, sat in samadhi, visiting the heaven of the Thirty-three, and seeing the rejoicing he learnt its cause. Immediately he returned to earth, and repaired to the palace, asking to see the new-born child. The prince was brought in to salute the great adept, but he rose from his seat and bowed to the child, saying: "I may not work my own destruction"; for assuredly if the child had been made to bow to his feet, the hermit's head would have split atwain, so much had it been against the order of nature.
Now the adept cast backward and forward his vision over forty aeons, and perceived that the child would become a Buddha in his present birth; but he saw that he himself would die before the Great Enlightenment came to pass, and being reborn in the heaven of No-form, a hundred or even a thousand Buddhas might appear before he found the opportunity to become the disciple of any; and seeing this, he wept. He sent, however, for his nephew, then a householder, and advised him to become a hermit, for at the end of thirty-five years he would receive the teaching of the Buddha; and that same nephew, by name Nalak, afterwards entered the order and became an Arahat.
On that fifty day the name ceremonies were performed, and the child was called Siddhattha (Siddhartha). On this occasion eight soothsayers were present amongst the Brahmans, and of these seven foresaw that the child would become either a Universal Monarch or a Buddha, but the eighth, by name Kondanna, predicted that he would of a surety become a Buddha. This same Kondanna afterwards belonged to the five who became the Buddha's first disciples.
Then the prince's father inquired: "What will my son see, that will be the occasion of his forsaking the household life?" "The Four Signs," was the answer, "a man worn out by age, a sick man, a dead body, and a hermit." Then the king resolved that no such sights should ever be seen by his son, for he did not wish him to become a Buddha, but desired that he should rule the whole world; and he appointed an innumerable and magnificent guard and retinue to protect his son from any such illuminating omens, and to occupy his mind with wordly pleasures.
Seven days after the child's birth the Lady Maha Maya died, and was reborn in the heaven of the Thirty-three Gods, and Siddhattha was placed in the charge of his aunt and stepmother the Matron Gautami. And now came to pass another miracle, on the occasion of the Ploughing Festival. For while the king was inaugurating the ploughing with his own hands, and the nurses were preparing food, the Bodhisatta took his seat beneath a Jambu-tree, and, crossing his legs like a yogi, he exercised the first degree of contemplation; and though time passed, the shadow of the tree did not move. When the king beheld that miracle he bowed to the child, and cried: "This, dear one, is the second homage paid to thee!"
As the Bodhisatta grew up his father built for him three palaces, respectively of nine, five, and seven stories, and here he dwelt according to the seasons. Here the Bodhisatta was surrounded by every luxury, and thousands of dancing-girls were appointed for his service and entertainment. Taken to the teachers of writing and the other arts, he soon surpassed them all, and he excelled in all marital exercises. ...
