As you are all aware, the actual date of the birth of the Buddha is still a matter of controversy, but may be fixed approximately at about B.c. 600. He was born in the city of Kapila-vastu, about one hundred miles due north of the city of Benares. This was one of those portions of the valley of the Ganges which had not yet been brought under the influence of the Brahmins. It was far to the east of the Holy Land of Brahmin tradition, and there can be but little doubt that, at the time of which we speak, the inhabitants of that district were in many respects more independent of the Brahmins than the countries farther west. We have no evidence that there was any large number of Brahmins settled in the country, which was inhabited by a high-caste tribe, forming the Sakya clan. Its government was certainly aristocratic. We find indeed, in the sixth century before Christ, in the valley of the Ganges, a stage of social evolution very similar to that reached in Greece at the time of Plato. With one or two exceptions, kingdoms had not yet arisen. The country was politically split up into small communities, governed under republican institutions, some aristocratic, and some more democratic in character. These were just beginning to lose their independence by being merged into kingdoms formed by some successful despot. The later legends represent the Buddha as having been the son of such a king. But this is distinctly contradicted by the earliest documents. The texts are most particularly, almost ludicrously, careful to speak of everyone with the exact degree of reverence or respect due to their worldly position. Now Gotama’s father is not spoken of as a king until we come to later documents, whereas his first cousin, Bhaddiya, is addressed by the title of Raja. Even Raja, however, is not necessarily the same as “ king ” in English. It means “ ruler,” and may well have no stronger signification than that of “chief” or “headman.” The probability therefore is that Gotama was born in a family belonging to the highest ruling caste of the small Aryan community centred at Kapila-vastu in Kosala. The later accounts would lead one to infer that the Sakya domain was a rich and extensive country. There is nothing in the older books to confirm this opinion. Indeed, from the references to the adjoining states, it would seem to have been a small territory; not much more than 1500 square miles in extent. His people were agriculturists and, no doubt, the economic position even of the principal families among them was of a very simple kind. All the marvellous details of the wealth and glory of the royal palace, in which he lived in Oriental luxury, are due to the natural desire to magnify the splendour of the position he renounced, when, for the sake of others, he “came out” as a mendicant teacher. The name of his mother has not yet been found in the oldest texts, but it is given in the Buddhavansa as Maya, and we are told that she died when he was seven days old, and that he was brought up by his aunt, Maha Pajapati of the Gotamids. We also know that he was married (though the name of his wife is not given), that he had a son named Rahula, and that this son afterwards became an insignificant member of the Order’ founded by his father. Of Gotama’s childhood and early youth we know next to nothing from the earlier texts. But there are not wanting even there descriptions of the wonders which attended his birth, and of the marvellous precocity of the boy. “He was not born as ordinary men are ; he had no earthly father; he descended of his own accord into his mother’s womb from his throne in heaven ; and he gave unmistakable signs, immediately after his birth, of his high character and of his future greatness. Earth and heaven at his birth united to pay him homage, the very trees bent of their own accord over his mother, and the angels and archangels were present with their help. His mother was the best and the purest of the daughters of men, and his father was of royal lineage, a king of wealth and power. It was a pious task to make his abnegation and his condescension greater by the comparison between the splendour of the position he was to abandon, and the poverty in which he afterwards lived. And in countries distant from Kapila-vastu the inconsistencies between such glowing accounts, and the very names they contain, passed unnoticed by credulous hearers.” Such legends are indeed of tne greatest possible historical value from the comparative point of view. Similar legends are related of all the founders of great religions, and even of the more famous kings and conquerors in the ancient world. In a certain stage of intellectual progress it is a necessity of the human mind that such legends should grow up. They are due, in every case, to similar causes, and most instructive is it to watch those causes at work.
