BUDDHA, BUDDHISM

will be born in a Kshatriya family. Next arediscussed the different royal families of India,and one by one each is rejected, until finallyBuddha shews that the Sakya royal family ofKapilavastu possesses the requisite qualifications.Buddha then leaves the Bodhisattwa Maitreya\s his vicegerent in the Tushita heaven, duringhis absence on earth, and puts his own diademjn his head.

The scene of the legend now changes to earth.

/

Mayadevf,* the queen of King Suddhodana, asksthe king’s leave to fast and practise austeritiesin a palace by herself; her abode is to be deckedwith every mark of honour, and to resound withmusic and song. While she is sleeping there,Buddha descends from heaven, in the form of awhite elephant, attended by myriads of heavenlybeings, and enters her womb. She perceiveshis arrival in a dream, and announces it to theking. He summons the Brahmans u skilled in

the Rig Veda and the Sastras,” and they declarethat the king who will be born, is destined eitherto be a universal emperor of ideal justice andglory, or, if he become a devotee, to be a Buddhawho shall give blessings to all the worlds.(Similar pretended prophecies of the signs of aBuddha in the Vedas are mentioned in theCeylonese legends, see Hardy, Manual^ p. 371.)

When the time for Buddha’s birth approached,the queen went with a royal retinue to thegarden of Lumbini, and there under a ficus re-ligiosa is Buddha born, coming forth miracu-lously from her right side, The gods, Indra andBrahma, received the infant in their arms; hisbody is marked with thirty-two pre-eminent andeighty secondary marks; as a protuberance onthe top of the skull, curled hair, a circle of hairbetween the eyebrows, &c., many of which pecu-liarities are still to be seen in all the images of

times we have the actual word brdhmana, and similarlywe may find the initial hints of the later Kshatriyas andVaisyas), but, with the exception of one verse in the lastbook, it is entirely silent as to the fourth or siidra caste.In the other Vedas we find the caste system fully deve-loped. But in the upanishads, i. e. those treatises of reli-gious philosophy which form a part of the later Vedicliterature and subsequently gave rise to the Vedjintasystem, we find the great teachers of this highest know-ledge to be Kshatriyas and not Brahmans, and Brahmansare continually represented as going to the great Ksbat*riya kings (especially Janaka of Videha) to become theirpupils, in the Chhdndogya Upanishad, v. 3, the great sageGautama Aruni goes to king Prav&hana and begs to beinstructed by him. The king complies, after first saying:“ This knowledge before thee never came to the Brah-mans ; therefore hitherto in all worlds the right of teach-ing it has belonged exclusively to the Kshatriya caste."Similarly the gtfyatrf, or most sacred verse of the KigVeda, occurs in a hymn by Viswdmitra, who in later tra-dition is described as a Kshatriya who by penances ex-ported his admission into the Brahmanical caste.

f Her very name seems to indicate an allegory, as M&yais the well-known Sanskrit word for “ illusion," which isaontinualiy personified as Nature, to express the illusivecharacter of all created things.

g The Lalita Vistara nowhere states explicitly thatBuddha’s mother was a virgin; it only states (Sansk.text, p. 27,1.13) that she had never brought forth child-ren, and (p. 31 , l. ii) that she had, with her husband’sconsent, made a vow of ascetic chastity for 32 months (cf.Hardy's Manual, p. 141). Csoma de Kdros (As. Res. xx.299) states that the belief of her virginity comes fromMongolia; but the tradition wag known to Jerome, see swp.

BUDDHA, BUDDHISM 343

Buddha. Sakya Muni is no sooner born thanhe takes seven steps towards each of the fourquarters of the horizon, and also towards thenadir and zenith, each time declaring his ownunrivalled superiority. [Buddha here interruptshis discourse in the original to prophesy thatmany of his future followers will disbelieve thesemiracles of his birth, and he forewarns them ofthe hell prepared for their punishment.]

Seven days after his birth, the queen dies;the infant is named Sarvarthasiddha, and isentrusted to the care of his maternal aunt Mahii-prajapati Gautami. Soon afterwards, an oldsage named Asita, h residing with his nephew onthe side of Himalaya, having seen by his divineintuition what had come to pass, repaired toKapilavastu to visit the infant. On beingadmitted to see him, he takes the child in hisarms, and prophesies the future glory of hiscareer. He then weeps to think that he him-self is old, and cannot hope to live to hear theBuddha’s doctrines from his own lips.

About this time the child is taken to thetemples of the gods; directly he sets his footwithin their precincts, all the images rise fromtheir places and fall at his feet. [Cf. the fallingdown of the idols of Egypt in the EvangeliumInfantiae , § 10.]

After some years he is taken with immensepomp to the writing school; on his entry theteacher Viswamitra, unable to bear the splen-dour of his appearance, falls to the ground beforehim. A deity raises him up and tells him whohis pupil is. Buddha then takes a writing-tabletof sandalwood, and asks the teacher in whichkind of writing he wishes to instruct him, atthe same time enumerating sixty-four differentkinds. Viswamitra, astonished, confesses thathe does not even know the names of these kindsof writing; and Buddha then gives a lesson tothe whole school, by which every letter of theSanskrit alphabet becomes associated with sometruth of Buddhist philosophy. [Cf. the legendin the Evangelium Infantiae , § 48.]

When he becomes a little older, he goes oneday with some of his companions to wander inthe fields; he turns aside and seats himself undera tree, and plunges into profound meditation,and there he is visited by the five heavenlysages. Meanwhile the king, uneasy at his longabsence, sends his servants to look for him; oneof the ministers finds him seated under the tree ;the shadow of all the other trees had turnedwith the sun, but that under which he sat stillkept its shadow over him.

When the prince is grown up, the king pro-poses that he should marry, as he hopes that inthis way he may prevent the threatened dangerof his son becoming an ascetic and abandoningall family ties. Sakya Muni describes the vir-tues which the woman must possess who is tobe his wife, and the family priest is commissionedto seek in the city for a lady who fulfils therequired conditions. u Whatever maiden hasthese excellences,” says the king, “ be she thedaughter of a Kshatriya, a Brahman, a Vaisya

or a Sudra, bring her to us.” The Brahman findsone Gopa, the daughter of a Kshatriya of theroyal race, named Dandapani, who exactly

b Cf. Kern, Virdhamihira, Pref. p. 41.