Re: The Life of Buddha as Legend and History, by Edward J Th
Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 4:23 am
CHAPTER V: THE GREAT RENUNCIATION
AT the age of twenty-nine Gotama after a life spent in worldly enjoyments was startled out of his ease at the first sight of old age, sickness, and death, and fleeing secretly at night from his home became an ascetic.105 This is essentially what the later tradition tells us, but the Scriptures preserve earlier accounts of his conversion, which not only imply that this tradition did not then exist, but are in conflict with it. One of these occurs in the continuation of the above- quoted description of the luxurious life in the three palaces.
The same is then repeated of sickness and death, and "the elation in life utterly disappeared." Here we have the first mention of the signs that according to the legend awakened in Gotama's mind the problems of existence, his first sight of an old man, a sick man, and a corpse, to which is added the fourth sign of an ascetic. It is easy to see how the above account can have been developed into the story of his actually meeting these objects, but not how, if the story is a real biographical event, it can have been converted into this abstract form.
Another canonical passage, the Sutta of the Noble Search (Majjh. i 163), also put into Buddha's mouth, describes his conversion in still more general terms:
In these accounts we have no definite historical circumstances mentioned, nor any trace of the events of the legend as we find it in the commentaries and later works. These have elaborated a story, the different forms of which have so many contradictory details that they appear as independent inventions, based upon the abstract statements of the earlier texts.
According to the Jataka commentary Suddhodana on the name-giving day, after hearing from the eight brahmins the prophecy that his son, if he saw the four signs, would leave the world, set guards to ward them off from the sight of his son. But while the Bodhisatta was living in luxury in his three palaces the gods decided that it was time to rouse him.
On other days the gods represented a sick man and a corpse, and on each occasion he turned back in his agitation.
At length the day of the Great Renunciation arrived. He set out for the park as before, and saw a man who had abandoned the world. The charioteer inspired by the gods explained, and praised the virtues of renunciation. That day the Bodhisatta, taking pleasure in the thought of abandoning the world, went on to the park. After bathing he sat on the royal rock of state to be robed, and as his attendants stood round about him, Sakka, king of the gods, perceived that he would make the Great Renunciation at midnight, and sent the god Vissakamma in the likeness of the royal barber to adorn him. When he was returning ill majesty to the city, his father sent him a message that the mother of Rahula had borne a son. The Bodhisatta on hearing said, "Rahula is born, a bond is born," and his father therefore gave the order, "let prince Rahula be his name."107 At his entry occurred the well-known event that forms a parallel to the incident in Luke xi, 27:
Above: Temptation by Mara's Daughters
Below: Gotama's Flight
He awoke to find his female musicians sleeping round him in disgusting attitudes. Then filled with loathing for his worldly life he made his decision, and ordered his charioteer Channa to saddle his horse Kanthaka.
He left the city on his horse Kanthaka with the charioteer clinging to the tail. Divinities muffled the sound of his going, and the city gate was opened by the god that dwelt in it. At that moment the tempter Mara came, and standing in the air said, "sir, depart not. On the seventh day from now the jewel-wheel of empire will appear, and thou shalt rule over the four great islands and the two hundred small islands that surround them. Turn back, sir." The Bodhisatta refused, and Mara replied, "henceforth, whenever thou hast a thought of lust or malice or cruelty, I shall know."
And seeking for an entrance, like a shadow never leaving him, he followed him.111
It was on the full-moon day of the month Uttarasalha (June-July) that the Bodhisatta departed. A desire to look again at the city arose, and the great earth turned round, so that he should not have to look back. At that place he indicated the site which was to become the Kanthakanivattana shrine (the turning round of Kanthaka).
Accompanied by gods he went beyond three kingdoms, a distance of thirty leagues, reached the river Anoma, and his horse crossed it at one leap. Then giving his ornaments to his charioteer he took his sword and cut off his hair. It was thus reduced to two fingers in length, and curling to the right clung to his head, and like his beard remained so throughout his life. He threw his hair and beard into the sky. They rose a league high, and staying there were a sign that he would become Buddha. Sakka appeared and placed them in a shrine in the heaven of the Thirty-three gods. Then a Mahabrahma, who had been his friend Ghatikara in a former life, came and gave him the eight requisites of a monk -- three robes, bowl, razor, needle, girdle, and water-strainer. When he sent back his charioteer, his horse had listened to their talk, and thinking that he would never see his master again, died of a broken heart, and was reborn as a god.
This account as a whole is not found in the Scriptures, but the story in its main outlines is told of Vipassin Buddha in the Mahapadana-sutta (Digha ii 21 ff.), a discourse which, as we have seen, belongs to a period that had developed the doctrines of the marvellous career of all Bodhisattas and of six previous Buddhas. It is probably only due to the practice of abbreviating repetitions that the story is not told at length of all the seven. The whole is legend, with no claim to be the historic words of Buddha. The Jataka adds several personal incidents, some of which are in contradiction with other post-canonical versions, and are probably peculiar to the Pali. Two of these are of special interest. The shrine of the Turning back of Kanthaka (Kanthakanivattana) was no doubt a real shrine known to the authorities on which the Pali commentator depended. But whether the commentator has interpreted it correctly is doubtful, as according to his own account there was no turning round of Kanthaka at that place, but the Bodhisatta "kept him facing on the way he was to go". It is more likely that the place was where the charioteer with the horse finally took leave of his master, and identical with the shrine mentioned in the Lalita-vistara, the Turning back of Chandaka (Chandakanivartana), at the place where the charioteer Channa or Chandaka "left the Bodhisatta and returned with the horse. The other incident of the Bodhisatta's hair turning in curls to the right after being cut, is in accordance with the actual practice of thus representing the curls on images of Buddha. But images of this kind, as will be seen, are not of the earliest type of representations of Buddha, and cannot be put before the second century of the Christian era. This is entirely in harmony with what we can conclude independently of the late date of the commentary itself.
Another incident of this legend occurs in the canonical Vimanavatthu (VII 7), and Mahavastu (ii 190), where the elder Moggallana visits the heaven of the Thirty-three, and sees the god Kanlhaka, who explains that he was formerly the Bodhisatta's horse, and tells the story of the flight.
The Lalita-vistara differs from the Pali not only in the multiplication of incidents, but also by Mahayana additions. One of these is the whole of chapter xiii, 'The Exhorting.' The gods say that it is the rule (dharmata) that a Bodhisatta in his last existence should be exhorted in his seraglio by the Buddhas of the ten points of space. These exhort him in 124 stanzas, and even the music of the seraglio turns into words to ripen his purpose.
The narrative proper begins with chapter xiv. The Bodhisatta causes the king to dream, and the king in his dream sees his son leaving the world. On waking he builds three palaces for him, each guarded by five hundred men. The visits to the park and the seeing of the four signs are much the same as in other accounts. Gopa then dreams ominous dreams, but they are interpreted favourably by the Bodhisatta.112 He himself also dreams, and rises to ask his father's permission to leave the world, but promises to stay if he will grant four boons, that he may be always young, always healthy, of unending life, and always happy. The king declares them impossible, and the Bodhisatta then asks that there may be no rebirth for him. The king refuses permission, and sets new guards.
The Bodhisatta then meditates in the seraglio, makes his resolution at midnight, and summons his charioteer Chandaka, who tries in vain to persuade him to seek enjoyment first. The gods put the city to sleep, and accompanied by them he goes beyond the Sakyas, the Kodyas (Koliyas), and the Mallas, and at daybreak reaches the town Anuvaineya of the Maineyas, six leagues away. There he gives his ornaments and the horse to Chandaka. On the place where Chandaka turned back a shrine was built called the Turning back of Chandaka. The Bodhisatta cuts off his hair and changes his robes for yellow ones, which are given him by one of the gods of the Pure Abode. There a shrine was built called the Taking of the Yellow Robes (Kashayagrahana).
The seraglio and the king awake, and seeing a god bringing the Bodhisatta's royal robes, and Chandaka following with the horse and the ornaments, think that the Bodhisatta has been killed for the sake of his precious robes, but Chandaka tells them that it is impossible to bring back the Bodhisatta until he has attained complete enlightenment. For a long time the ornaments were worn by the Sakyas Bhadrika Mahanama, and Aniruddha, but as they were too heavy even for Narayana (Vishnu), Mahapajapati unable through grief to bear the sight of them threw them into a lotus-pool. This became known as the Ornaments-pool (Abharana-pushkarini).
The question now arises whether we can assume that there is a basis of historical reality for these two legends. The appearances. of the gods and the miracles need not detain us, as these may quite well have been added to a real story by people who devoutly believed in such things. Nor arc the contradictions fatal. These may be independent accretions. The statement that the Bodhisatta travelled thirty leagues (over 200 miles) between midnight and dawn may well be an exaggeration, and one account makes the distance only six leagues (some forty-five miles). When one account says that the horse died, and another that he was brought back, and that Rahula was born on the night of the Renunciation, or seven days before, or that he was only conceived then, evidently one of them is incorrect, if not all. The reference to the shrines commemorating various miraculous events only proves that at a period of some seven or eight centuries at least after Buddha's death the legends about them were established.
If Buddha is a historical personage, it is clear that a Renunciation took place, and nothing more is needed as the basis for a wholly fictitious legend. In the case of the four signs we have scriptural evidence for holding that the story of the four visits to the park is only the historicising of a canonical passage which knows nothing of these events. The events have been merely built up out of the meditation on old age, sickness, and death. We find the same state of things in the story of the Renunciation. The oldest canonical accounts given above of Gotama's leaving the world are quite different from the later legend. They are repeated in various parts of the Scriptures, and in the sutta addressed to the Jain Mahasaccaka(Majjh. i 240) they are quite mechanically combined.
That is all, and even if the compiler of this sutta knew the later legend, he is here using the phraseology of a period which ignores the whole of it. It makes the Bodhisatta leave the world not at the age of twenty-nine, but when quite a boy (dahara). The reference to hair and beard is a formal statement, made here because it is used in describing any ascetic, even the boy Nalaka, the nephew of Asita. To strip the legend of its miracles and contradictions is to leave a nucleus that is as foreign to the oldest sources as all the rest. Oldenberg himself rejects it as highly coloured poetry, and for the canonical accounts only claims that they arc unadorned fragments of the little that an older generation knew, or thought that it knew, of those things.
An important element in this legend is the story of Buddha's wife and his son Rahula. Oldenberg says that the statements concerning them should be all the less held to be invented, the more frequently they occur in the older tradition without the person of Rahula or his mother being used for a didactic purpose or for bringing out pathetic situations.113 This is true in a sense. There are no pathetic situations, because the persons are not mentioned in the older tradition at all. The name Bhadda Kaccana is only one of the three or four persons identified by the later tradition with Buddha's wife, and the identification is not made by the older texts.114 The case stands exactly the same with Rahula. He is never mentioned in the older texts as Buddha's son. There are, it is true, four or more Rahula-suttas, and three Rahulovada-suttas,115 where he merely appears as an interlocutor like other monks. In the Theragatha, a late work which the commentators themselves admit to be in parts no earlier than the third Council, Rahula is made to say, "I am son of Buddha." But this evidence would also prove that Buddha had four sons, for three other elders in this work say the same thing. Sirivaddha says, "I am the son of the incomparable one," Kassapa of Gaya says, "I am a true son of Buddha," and Kaludayin says, "I am Buddha's son." But all Buddha's disciples are frequently called in the same language Buddha's true or genuine sons, putta orasa, 'sons of the breast.'116
That Buddha should have had a wife is not only natural but according to Indian ideas inevitable. To marry is one of the duties of a person living in the world. The chroniclers did not need to start from the historic fact that Buddha had a wife and son. This may be true, and may rest on unwritten tradition, but it is certain that the tradition has preserved no information about them. Among the various guesses concerning Buddha's wife, the view that identified her with Bhadda Kaccana, an otherwise entirely unknown nun in the list of great disciples, is not unanimous even in the Pali commentators. They searched the Scriptures, and in the same list they found Rahula, 'the chief of those who desire instruction.' Even the Pali commentarial tradition is uncertain about him, and the other traditions show that they, if not all the others, had nothing certain to tell us.
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Notes:
105 That he left the world at the age of twenty-nine and died at eighty is implied in the verses quoted in the Mahaparinibbana-sutta, Digha, ii 151.
106 The world is mada, lit. 'intoxication.'
107 This incident appears to be an attempt to explain the name Rahula, but Rahula does not mean a bond. It is a diminutive of Rahu, the monster who swallows the sun or moon during an eclipse, and it would be a natural name for a person born at such a time. (See Art. Sun, Moon, and Stars, Buddhist, ERE.) Personal names derived from stars or constellatiui1s are very common. This astronomical explanation of the name is the one given in Schiefner, Tib. Lebensb. § 10, which says that the Moon was eclipsed at Rahula's birth. In Mvastu, ii 159 he descends from the Tushita heaven on the night of the Renunciation, as according to this work he is born like a Bodhisatta without the intervention of his father. In Rockhill, p. 24, he appears to have been conceived seven days before.
108 The word for 'happy' is nibbuta, literally meaning' extinguished', as it is used in the next sentence; the state of being extinguished is nibbana, the Pali form of Sanskrit nirvana. As will be seen from this passage, there is no reference to the question of the extinction of the individual or personality at death. That for the Buddhist is a further question.
109 According to Mvastu ii 157 the lady's name was Mrigi, and she was the mother of Ananda. In the account in Rockhill, p. 24, she became the Bodhisatta's wife, seven days before he left home.
110 The old, probably Singhalese, commentary used by the commentator in compiling his own work, showing that there were different traditions even in the Theravada school.
111 This is the first recorded temptation by Mara. Mara is held to have fulfilled his threat, and to have taken every opportunity of tempting Buddha throughout his life.
112 There is here a striking difference from the conception of the Bodhisatta's wife in the Pali, where she is identified with a nun who attains arahatship. Here the Bodhisatta interprets one of her dreams as meaning that she will be reborn as a man in her next existence.
113 Buddha, p. 119; but they are certainly used for didactic and pathetic purposes in the commentaries.
114 See above, p. 49.
115 Sn. 335; Samy. iii 135, 136; iv 105; Ang. ii 164; Majjh. i 414, 420; iii 277.
116 Therag. 295, 41, 348, 536; cf. Samy. iii 83:
So Kassapa the Great describes himself, Samy, ii 221, and Buddha tells his disciples, when asked who they are, to say that they are true sons of the Lord, Digha, iii 84.
AT the age of twenty-nine Gotama after a life spent in worldly enjoyments was startled out of his ease at the first sight of old age, sickness, and death, and fleeing secretly at night from his home became an ascetic.105 This is essentially what the later tradition tells us, but the Scriptures preserve earlier accounts of his conversion, which not only imply that this tradition did not then exist, but are in conflict with it. One of these occurs in the continuation of the above- quoted description of the luxurious life in the three palaces.
Then, O monks, did I, endowed with such majesty and such excessive delicacy, think thus, "an ignorant, ordinary person, who is himself subject to old age, not beyond the sphere of old age, on seeing an old man is troubled, ashamed, and disgusted, extending the thought to himself. I too am subject to old age, not beyond the sphere of old age, and should I, who am subject to old age, not beyond the sphere of old age, on seeing an old man be troubled, ashamed, and disgusted?" This seemed to me not fitting. As I thus reflected on it, all the elation106 in youth utterly disappeared.
The same is then repeated of sickness and death, and "the elation in life utterly disappeared." Here we have the first mention of the signs that according to the legend awakened in Gotama's mind the problems of existence, his first sight of an old man, a sick man, and a corpse, to which is added the fourth sign of an ascetic. It is easy to see how the above account can have been developed into the story of his actually meeting these objects, but not how, if the story is a real biographical event, it can have been converted into this abstract form.
Another canonical passage, the Sutta of the Noble Search (Majjh. i 163), also put into Buddha's mouth, describes his conversion in still more general terms:
Thus, O monks, before my enlightenment, while yet a Bodhisatta and not fully enlightened, being myself subject to birth I sought out the nature of birth, being subject to old age I sought out the nature of old age, of sickness, of death, of sorrow, of impurity. Then I thought, "what if I being myself subject to birth were to seek out the nature of birth ... and having seen the wretchedness of the nature of birth, were to seek out the unborn, the supreme peace of Nirvana." (Repeated similarly of old age, sickness, death, sorrow, and impurity.)
In these accounts we have no definite historical circumstances mentioned, nor any trace of the events of the legend as we find it in the commentaries and later works. These have elaborated a story, the different forms of which have so many contradictory details that they appear as independent inventions, based upon the abstract statements of the earlier texts.
According to the Jataka commentary Suddhodana on the name-giving day, after hearing from the eight brahmins the prophecy that his son, if he saw the four signs, would leave the world, set guards to ward them off from the sight of his son. But while the Bodhisatta was living in luxury in his three palaces the gods decided that it was time to rouse him.
Now one day the Bodhisatta wishing to go to the park summoned his charioteer, and told him to harness the chariot. He obeyed, and adorning the great splendid chariot with all its adornments yoked the four state horses white 3slotus-petals, and informed the Bodhisatta. The Bodhisatta ascended the chariot, which was like a vehicle of the gods, and went towards the park. The gods thought, "the time for prince Siddhattha to attain enlightenment is at hand: we will show him a previous sign." So they made a god appear, worn out with old age, with broken teeth, grey hair, bent, with broken-down body, a stick in his hand, and trembling. It was the Bodhisatta and the charioteer (only) who saw him. The Bodhisatta asked his charioteer, as in the Mahapadana-sutta; "what man is this? Even his hair is not like that of others," and on hearing his reply said, "woe to birth, when the old age of one that is born shall be known." With agitated heart he thereupon returned and ascended his palace. The king asked why his son had returned so quickly. "O king, he has seen an old man, and on seeing an old man he will leave the world." "By this you arc ruining me. Get together dancing girls for my son. If he enjoys luxury, he will have no thought of leaving the world." And so saying he increased the guards, and set them in all directions to the distance of hall a league.
On other days the gods represented a sick man and a corpse, and on each occasion he turned back in his agitation.
At length the day of the Great Renunciation arrived. He set out for the park as before, and saw a man who had abandoned the world. The charioteer inspired by the gods explained, and praised the virtues of renunciation. That day the Bodhisatta, taking pleasure in the thought of abandoning the world, went on to the park. After bathing he sat on the royal rock of state to be robed, and as his attendants stood round about him, Sakka, king of the gods, perceived that he would make the Great Renunciation at midnight, and sent the god Vissakamma in the likeness of the royal barber to adorn him. When he was returning ill majesty to the city, his father sent him a message that the mother of Rahula had borne a son. The Bodhisatta on hearing said, "Rahula is born, a bond is born," and his father therefore gave the order, "let prince Rahula be his name."107 At his entry occurred the well-known event that forms a parallel to the incident in Luke xi, 27:
At that time a kshatriya maiden named Kisa Gotaml had gone to the roof of the palace, and seeing the beauty and glory of the Bodhisatta, as he made a rightwise circuit round the city, she was filled with joy and delight, and breathed forth this solemn utterance:Happy indeed is the mother,
Happy indeed is the father,
Happy indeed is the wife,
Who has such a husband.
The Bodhisatta heard, and thought, " even so she spoke. On her seeing such a form a mother's heart becomes happy, a father's heart becomes happy, a wife's heart becomes happy.108 Now when what is extinguished is the heart happy?" And with aversion in his heart for lusts he thought, "when the fire of passion is extinguished, it is happy, when the fire of illusion, when pride, false views, and all the lusts and pains are extinguished, it is happy. She has taught me a good lesson, for I am searching for extinguishment (Nirvana). Even to-day I must reject and renounce a household life, and go forth from the world to seek Nirvana. Let this be her fee for teaching." And loosing from his neck a pearl necklace worth 100,000 pieces, he sent it to Kisa Gotami. She thought that prince Siddhattha was in love with her, and had sent her a present, and she was filled with delight. But the Bodhisatta with great glory and majesty ascended his palace, and lay down on the bed.109
Above: Temptation by Mara's Daughters
Below: Gotama's Flight
He awoke to find his female musicians sleeping round him in disgusting attitudes. Then filled with loathing for his worldly life he made his decision, and ordered his charioteer Channa to saddle his horse Kanthaka.
The Bodhisatta having sent Channa thought, "now I will look at my son," and rising from where he had been sitting cross-legged he went to the abode of the mother of Rahula, and opened the door of the chamber. Just then a lamp of scented oil was burning. On the bed strewn with heaps of jessamine and other flowers the mother of Rahula was sleeping with her hand on her son's head. The Bodhisatta standing with his foot on the threshold looked, and thought, "if I move aside the queen's hand and take my son, the queen will awake and this will be an obstacle to my going. When I have become a Buddha, I will come back and see him," and he descended from the palace. But what is said in the Jataka commentary,110 that" at that time prince Rahula had been born seven days", is not in the other commentaries. Hence the account given above should be received.
He left the city on his horse Kanthaka with the charioteer clinging to the tail. Divinities muffled the sound of his going, and the city gate was opened by the god that dwelt in it. At that moment the tempter Mara came, and standing in the air said, "sir, depart not. On the seventh day from now the jewel-wheel of empire will appear, and thou shalt rule over the four great islands and the two hundred small islands that surround them. Turn back, sir." The Bodhisatta refused, and Mara replied, "henceforth, whenever thou hast a thought of lust or malice or cruelty, I shall know."
And seeking for an entrance, like a shadow never leaving him, he followed him.111
It was on the full-moon day of the month Uttarasalha (June-July) that the Bodhisatta departed. A desire to look again at the city arose, and the great earth turned round, so that he should not have to look back. At that place he indicated the site which was to become the Kanthakanivattana shrine (the turning round of Kanthaka).
Accompanied by gods he went beyond three kingdoms, a distance of thirty leagues, reached the river Anoma, and his horse crossed it at one leap. Then giving his ornaments to his charioteer he took his sword and cut off his hair. It was thus reduced to two fingers in length, and curling to the right clung to his head, and like his beard remained so throughout his life. He threw his hair and beard into the sky. They rose a league high, and staying there were a sign that he would become Buddha. Sakka appeared and placed them in a shrine in the heaven of the Thirty-three gods. Then a Mahabrahma, who had been his friend Ghatikara in a former life, came and gave him the eight requisites of a monk -- three robes, bowl, razor, needle, girdle, and water-strainer. When he sent back his charioteer, his horse had listened to their talk, and thinking that he would never see his master again, died of a broken heart, and was reborn as a god.
This account as a whole is not found in the Scriptures, but the story in its main outlines is told of Vipassin Buddha in the Mahapadana-sutta (Digha ii 21 ff.), a discourse which, as we have seen, belongs to a period that had developed the doctrines of the marvellous career of all Bodhisattas and of six previous Buddhas. It is probably only due to the practice of abbreviating repetitions that the story is not told at length of all the seven. The whole is legend, with no claim to be the historic words of Buddha. The Jataka adds several personal incidents, some of which are in contradiction with other post-canonical versions, and are probably peculiar to the Pali. Two of these are of special interest. The shrine of the Turning back of Kanthaka (Kanthakanivattana) was no doubt a real shrine known to the authorities on which the Pali commentator depended. But whether the commentator has interpreted it correctly is doubtful, as according to his own account there was no turning round of Kanthaka at that place, but the Bodhisatta "kept him facing on the way he was to go". It is more likely that the place was where the charioteer with the horse finally took leave of his master, and identical with the shrine mentioned in the Lalita-vistara, the Turning back of Chandaka (Chandakanivartana), at the place where the charioteer Channa or Chandaka "left the Bodhisatta and returned with the horse. The other incident of the Bodhisatta's hair turning in curls to the right after being cut, is in accordance with the actual practice of thus representing the curls on images of Buddha. But images of this kind, as will be seen, are not of the earliest type of representations of Buddha, and cannot be put before the second century of the Christian era. This is entirely in harmony with what we can conclude independently of the late date of the commentary itself.
Another incident of this legend occurs in the canonical Vimanavatthu (VII 7), and Mahavastu (ii 190), where the elder Moggallana visits the heaven of the Thirty-three, and sees the god Kanlhaka, who explains that he was formerly the Bodhisatta's horse, and tells the story of the flight.
The Lalita-vistara differs from the Pali not only in the multiplication of incidents, but also by Mahayana additions. One of these is the whole of chapter xiii, 'The Exhorting.' The gods say that it is the rule (dharmata) that a Bodhisatta in his last existence should be exhorted in his seraglio by the Buddhas of the ten points of space. These exhort him in 124 stanzas, and even the music of the seraglio turns into words to ripen his purpose.
The narrative proper begins with chapter xiv. The Bodhisatta causes the king to dream, and the king in his dream sees his son leaving the world. On waking he builds three palaces for him, each guarded by five hundred men. The visits to the park and the seeing of the four signs are much the same as in other accounts. Gopa then dreams ominous dreams, but they are interpreted favourably by the Bodhisatta.112 He himself also dreams, and rises to ask his father's permission to leave the world, but promises to stay if he will grant four boons, that he may be always young, always healthy, of unending life, and always happy. The king declares them impossible, and the Bodhisatta then asks that there may be no rebirth for him. The king refuses permission, and sets new guards.
The Bodhisatta then meditates in the seraglio, makes his resolution at midnight, and summons his charioteer Chandaka, who tries in vain to persuade him to seek enjoyment first. The gods put the city to sleep, and accompanied by them he goes beyond the Sakyas, the Kodyas (Koliyas), and the Mallas, and at daybreak reaches the town Anuvaineya of the Maineyas, six leagues away. There he gives his ornaments and the horse to Chandaka. On the place where Chandaka turned back a shrine was built called the Turning back of Chandaka. The Bodhisatta cuts off his hair and changes his robes for yellow ones, which are given him by one of the gods of the Pure Abode. There a shrine was built called the Taking of the Yellow Robes (Kashayagrahana).
The seraglio and the king awake, and seeing a god bringing the Bodhisatta's royal robes, and Chandaka following with the horse and the ornaments, think that the Bodhisatta has been killed for the sake of his precious robes, but Chandaka tells them that it is impossible to bring back the Bodhisatta until he has attained complete enlightenment. For a long time the ornaments were worn by the Sakyas Bhadrika Mahanama, and Aniruddha, but as they were too heavy even for Narayana (Vishnu), Mahapajapati unable through grief to bear the sight of them threw them into a lotus-pool. This became known as the Ornaments-pool (Abharana-pushkarini).
The question now arises whether we can assume that there is a basis of historical reality for these two legends. The appearances. of the gods and the miracles need not detain us, as these may quite well have been added to a real story by people who devoutly believed in such things. Nor arc the contradictions fatal. These may be independent accretions. The statement that the Bodhisatta travelled thirty leagues (over 200 miles) between midnight and dawn may well be an exaggeration, and one account makes the distance only six leagues (some forty-five miles). When one account says that the horse died, and another that he was brought back, and that Rahula was born on the night of the Renunciation, or seven days before, or that he was only conceived then, evidently one of them is incorrect, if not all. The reference to the shrines commemorating various miraculous events only proves that at a period of some seven or eight centuries at least after Buddha's death the legends about them were established.
If Buddha is a historical personage, it is clear that a Renunciation took place, and nothing more is needed as the basis for a wholly fictitious legend. In the case of the four signs we have scriptural evidence for holding that the story of the four visits to the park is only the historicising of a canonical passage which knows nothing of these events. The events have been merely built up out of the meditation on old age, sickness, and death. We find the same state of things in the story of the Renunciation. The oldest canonical accounts given above of Gotama's leaving the world are quite different from the later legend. They are repeated in various parts of the Scriptures, and in the sutta addressed to the Jain Mahasaccaka(Majjh. i 240) they are quite mechanically combined.
Now before my enlightenment, while yet a bodhisatta and not yet fully enlightened, I thought, oppressive is life in a house, a place of dust. In the free air is abandonment of the world. Not easy is it for him who dwells in a house to practise a completely full, completely pure, and perfect religious life. What if I remove my hair and beard, and putting on yellow robes go forth from a house to a houseless life.
Now at another time, while yet a boy, a black-haired lad in the prime of youth, in the first stage of life, while my unwilling mother and father wept with tear-stained faces, I cut off my hair and beard, and putting on yellow robes went forth from a house to a houseless life.
That is all, and even if the compiler of this sutta knew the later legend, he is here using the phraseology of a period which ignores the whole of it. It makes the Bodhisatta leave the world not at the age of twenty-nine, but when quite a boy (dahara). The reference to hair and beard is a formal statement, made here because it is used in describing any ascetic, even the boy Nalaka, the nephew of Asita. To strip the legend of its miracles and contradictions is to leave a nucleus that is as foreign to the oldest sources as all the rest. Oldenberg himself rejects it as highly coloured poetry, and for the canonical accounts only claims that they arc unadorned fragments of the little that an older generation knew, or thought that it knew, of those things.
An important element in this legend is the story of Buddha's wife and his son Rahula. Oldenberg says that the statements concerning them should be all the less held to be invented, the more frequently they occur in the older tradition without the person of Rahula or his mother being used for a didactic purpose or for bringing out pathetic situations.113 This is true in a sense. There are no pathetic situations, because the persons are not mentioned in the older tradition at all. The name Bhadda Kaccana is only one of the three or four persons identified by the later tradition with Buddha's wife, and the identification is not made by the older texts.114 The case stands exactly the same with Rahula. He is never mentioned in the older texts as Buddha's son. There are, it is true, four or more Rahula-suttas, and three Rahulovada-suttas,115 where he merely appears as an interlocutor like other monks. In the Theragatha, a late work which the commentators themselves admit to be in parts no earlier than the third Council, Rahula is made to say, "I am son of Buddha." But this evidence would also prove that Buddha had four sons, for three other elders in this work say the same thing. Sirivaddha says, "I am the son of the incomparable one," Kassapa of Gaya says, "I am a true son of Buddha," and Kaludayin says, "I am Buddha's son." But all Buddha's disciples are frequently called in the same language Buddha's true or genuine sons, putta orasa, 'sons of the breast.'116
That Buddha should have had a wife is not only natural but according to Indian ideas inevitable. To marry is one of the duties of a person living in the world. The chroniclers did not need to start from the historic fact that Buddha had a wife and son. This may be true, and may rest on unwritten tradition, but it is certain that the tradition has preserved no information about them. Among the various guesses concerning Buddha's wife, the view that identified her with Bhadda Kaccana, an otherwise entirely unknown nun in the list of great disciples, is not unanimous even in the Pali commentators. They searched the Scriptures, and in the same list they found Rahula, 'the chief of those who desire instruction.' Even the Pali commentarial tradition is uncertain about him, and the other traditions show that they, if not all the others, had nothing certain to tell us.
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Notes:
105 That he left the world at the age of twenty-nine and died at eighty is implied in the verses quoted in the Mahaparinibbana-sutta, Digha, ii 151.
106 The world is mada, lit. 'intoxication.'
107 This incident appears to be an attempt to explain the name Rahula, but Rahula does not mean a bond. It is a diminutive of Rahu, the monster who swallows the sun or moon during an eclipse, and it would be a natural name for a person born at such a time. (See Art. Sun, Moon, and Stars, Buddhist, ERE.) Personal names derived from stars or constellatiui1s are very common. This astronomical explanation of the name is the one given in Schiefner, Tib. Lebensb. § 10, which says that the Moon was eclipsed at Rahula's birth. In Mvastu, ii 159 he descends from the Tushita heaven on the night of the Renunciation, as according to this work he is born like a Bodhisatta without the intervention of his father. In Rockhill, p. 24, he appears to have been conceived seven days before.
108 The word for 'happy' is nibbuta, literally meaning' extinguished', as it is used in the next sentence; the state of being extinguished is nibbana, the Pali form of Sanskrit nirvana. As will be seen from this passage, there is no reference to the question of the extinction of the individual or personality at death. That for the Buddhist is a further question.
109 According to Mvastu ii 157 the lady's name was Mrigi, and she was the mother of Ananda. In the account in Rockhill, p. 24, she became the Bodhisatta's wife, seven days before he left home.
110 The old, probably Singhalese, commentary used by the commentator in compiling his own work, showing that there were different traditions even in the Theravada school.
111 This is the first recorded temptation by Mara. Mara is held to have fulfilled his threat, and to have taken every opportunity of tempting Buddha throughout his life.
112 There is here a striking difference from the conception of the Bodhisatta's wife in the Pali, where she is identified with a nun who attains arahatship. Here the Bodhisatta interprets one of her dreams as meaning that she will be reborn as a man in her next existence.
113 Buddha, p. 119; but they are certainly used for didactic and pathetic purposes in the commentaries.
114 See above, p. 49.
115 Sn. 335; Samy. iii 135, 136; iv 105; Ang. ii 164; Majjh. i 414, 420; iii 277.
116 Therag. 295, 41, 348, 536; cf. Samy. iii 83:
Who understand the khandhas five.
In the good Doctrine live their life,
Worthy of praises, righteous men,
These are the Buddha's genuine sons.
So Kassapa the Great describes himself, Samy, ii 221, and Buddha tells his disciples, when asked who they are, to say that they are true sons of the Lord, Digha, iii 84.