they were not the exclusive possessors of such secular knowledge as could then be acquired, and they divided the odour of sanctity with ascetics from other castes. Here and there travelling logicians were willing to maintain theses against all the world; anchorites had their schemes of universal knowledge and salvation; ascetics with unwavering faith practised self-torture and self-repression, in the hope of becoming more powerful than the gods; and solitary hermits sought for some satisfactory solution of the mysteries of life. The ranks of the officiating priesthood were for ever firmly closed against intruders; but a man of lower caste, a Kshatriya or a Vaisya, whose mind revolted against the orthodox creed, or whose heart was stirred by mingled zeal and ambition, might find through these irregular openings an entrance to the career of religious teacher and reformer.

Under some such conditions as these, thus rudely sketched in outline, an Aryan tribe, named the Şakyas, were seated, about 500 years before the birth of Christ, at a place called Kapila-vastu, on the banks of the river Rohini, the modern Kohāna, about 100 miles north-east of the city of Benares. That insignificant stream rose thirty or forty miles. to the north of their settlement, in the spurs of the mighty Himalayas, whose giant peaks loomed up in the distance against the clear blue of the Indian sky. The Sakyas had penetrated further to the east than most of their fellow-Aryans, but beyond them in that direction was the powerful confederation of the Lichchavis, and the rising kingdom of Magadha. To their north were rude hill tribes of Mongolian extraction; while behind them to the

west lay those lands which the Brahmans held most sacred. Their nearest neighbours to be feared in that direction were the subjects of the king of Ṣrāvasti,1 the rival of the king of Magadha. It was this rivalry of their neighbours more than their own strength which secured for the Ṣakyas a precarious independence; but their own hand was strong enough to protect them against the incursions of roving bands from the hills, and to sustain them in their quarrels with neighbouring clans of the same standing as themselves. They lived from the produce of their cattle and their rice-fields; their supplies of water being drawn from the Kohāna, on the other side of which stream lived the Koliyans, a kindred tribe.

With them the Ṣākyas sometimes quarrelled for the possession of the precious liquid, but just then the two clans were at peace, and two daughters of the rāja or chief of the Koliyans were the wives of Suddhodana, the rāja of the Sakyas. The story tells us that both were childless; a misfortune great enough in other times and in other countries, but especially then among the Aryans, who thought that the state of a man's existence after death depended upon ceremonies to be performed by his heir. The rejoicing, therefore, was great when in about the forty-fifth year of her age the elder sister, promised her husband a son. In accordance with custom, she started in due time with the intention of being confined at her parents' house, but it was on the way under the shade of some lofty satintrees in a pleasant grove called Lumbini, that hei

1 See below, p. 69.

On the names, see Appendix to Chapter II., p. 51.

son, the future Buddha, was unexpectedly born. The mother and child were carried back to Suddhodana's house, and there, seven days afterwards, the mother died; but the boy found a careful nurse in his mother's sister, his father's other wife.

As with other men who afterwards became famous, many marvellous stories have been told about the miraculous birth and precocious wisdom and power of Gautama; and these are not without value, as showing the spirit of the times in which they arose and grew. It is probable that his having been an only child, born, as it were, out of due time, the subsequent death of his mother, and other details of the story may be due to this instinctive feeling that his birth must have been different from that of ordinary men.

Even the name Siddhārtha, said to have been given him as a child, may have been a subsequent invention, for it means 'he who has accomplished his aim.' But parents of Suddhodana's rank have never shown much aversion for grand names, and other Siddharthas are mentioned1 who were not at all peculiarly successful in accomplishing their desires. However this may be, his family name was certainly Gautama, and as this was the name by which he was usually known in after-life, we shall use it throughout this book. Any other names given to the founder of

1 Perhaps only in post-Buddhistic writings. The name occurs in works of the Northern Buddhists, and in Jaina books: but also in the Rāmāyana and Mahābhārata.

• Pronunciation, n. 1, p. 2. It is a curious fact that Gautama is still the family name of the Rājput chiefs of Nagara, the village which has been identified with Kapilavastu (Cunningham's 'Anc. Geog.,' i. 417). Gautama is often called simply 'the

Buck

Buddhism are not names at all, but titles. To the pious Buddhist it seems irreverent to speak of Gautama by his mere ordinary and human name, and he makes use, therefore, of one of those numerous epithets which are used only of the Buddha, the Enlightened One. Such are Ṣākya-sinha, 'the lion of the tribe of Ṣākya;' Ṣākya-muni, 'the Ṣākya sage;' Sugata, 'the happy one;' Sattha, 'the teacher;' Jina, 'the conqueror;' Bhagavā, 'the blessed one;' Loka-nātha, 'the Lord of the world;' Sarvajñā, 'the omniscient one;' Dharma-rāja, 'the king of righteousness,' and many others. These expressions, like the Swan of Avon, may have had very real significance in moments of poetic fire; but their constant use among the Buddhists tended, not to bring into clearer vision, but to veil the personality of Gautama, and their constant use as names by modern writers arises simply from mistake.

There seems to be no reason to doubt that Gautama was very early married to his cousin the daughter of the rāja of Koli (see p. 50); but the next episode in the biographies is probably due to the influences just referred to. According to most of the southern accounts, his relations soon after complained in a body to the rāja Suddhodana that his son, devoted to home pleasures, neglected those manly exercises necessary for one who might hereafter have to lead his kinsmen in case of war. Gautama, being told of this, is said to have appointed a day by beat of drum to prove his skill against all comers, and by surpassing even the cleverest bowmen, and showing his mastery in 'the twelve arts,' to have won back the good opinion of

Rajput' in the earlier portions of the Northern biographies (Klaproth's note in Foe Koue Ki,' p. 203).

the complaining clansmen.1 The Northern accounts, and the Madhurattha-vilāsini make this competition take place before his marriage, and for the hand of his wife; and there are other discrepancies. No reliance can therefore be placed on the actual occurrence of this episode, the rise of the story being easily explicable, as suggested above, by the universal desire to relate wonderful things of the boyhood of men afterwards famous. It is instructive to notice that we find most discrepancies in the accounts of those parts of the story which are most improbable, a consideration which confirms, I think, the authority of those other parts, in themselves not improbable, in which all the accounts agree.

This is the solitary record of his youth. We hear nothing more until in his 29th year, Gautama suddenly abandoned his home to devote himself entirely to the study of religion and philosophy. All our authorities agree in the reason they assign for this momentous step. A deity appeared to him in four visions, under the forms of a man broken down by age, of a sick man, of a decaying corpse, and lastly, of a dignified hermit-the visions appearing only to Gautama and his attendant Channa, who was each time specially inspired to explain to his deeply moved master the meaning of the sight. The different versions of this story contain various discrepancies in minor details; and the mere sight of an old or diseased stranger, or even of a dead body, would be insufficient of itself to work so powerful an effect on the mind of one who was not already keenly

On the later versions of the story see above, p. 13.

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