Five early teachers of young Bodhisatta acording Milindapanha

The Watercooler
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In the text of the Milindapanha, five former teachers of the young Bodhisatta are mentioned. Some information about Āḷāra Kālāma and Udaka Ramaputta can be found in the Suttas and Sutras, but not about the other former teachers. Does anyone maybe know of sources where the eight Brahmans Rāma, Dhaja, Lakkhaṇa, Mantī, Yañña, Suyāma, Subhoja, Sudatta, and Brahman Sabbamitta are mentioned?

'Those eight Brahmans who, just after the birth of the Bodisat, took note of the marks on his body—[236] Rāma, and Dhaja, and Lakkhaṇa, and Mantī [3], and Yañña [4], and Suyāma, and Subhoja [5], and Sudatta [6]—they who then made known his future glory, and marked him out as one to be carefully guarded-these were first his teachers [7].

'And again, O king, the Brahman Sabbamitta of distinguished descent, who was of high lineage in the land of Udicca [8], a philologist and grammarian, well read in the six Vedaṅgas [9], whom Suddhodana the king, the Bodisat’s father, sent for, and having poured out the water of dedication from a golden vase, handed over the boy to his charge, to be taught—this was his second teacher [10].

'And again, O king, the god who raised the agitation in the Bodisat’s heart, at the sound of whose speech the Bodisat, moved and anxious, that very moment went out from the world in his Great Renunciation—this was his third teacher [11].

'And again, O king, Āḷāra Kālāma—he was his fourth teacher.

'And again, O king, Uddaka the son of Rāma—he was his fifth teacher.

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The way I interpret the “Contradictory statements as to the Buddha’s teacher” is that it wasn’t contradictory at all. In his quest, the Buddha had teachers, but ultimately they didn’t teach him what he needed to learn to end dukkha, that he discovered it on his own.

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huh

in Lalitavistara Sutra, the one teaching language and mathematics is teacher named Visvamitra. The name is quite similar.

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The eight Brahmans Rāma, Dhaja, Lakkhaṇa, Mantī, Yañña, Suyāma, Subhoja, Sudatta, and Brahman Sabbamitta are mentioned
in the Nidānakathā to the Jātakas, The Birth Stories (Jātakatthavaṇṇanā).

  1. “Rāma, and Dhaja, and Lakkhaṇa, and Mantī,
    Koṇḍañña and Bhoja, Suyāma and Sudatta,
    These eight brahmins then were there,
    Their senses all subdued; and they declared the mantra.”
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the place udicca, which means i.e. north-westerly, of north-western origin, also sounds a bit like Oddiyana (Skt. Oḍḍiyāna; Tib. Orgyen; Wyl. u rgyan), which also is west or northwest of India

The 8 Brahmins are also mentioned in the following texts. Here you can also find the explanation that Yañña or Annata Kondanna joined the Buddha later, and the other 4 ascetics were sons of the other Brahmins, which they themselves could no longer join the Buddha because of their old age.
Maha Buddhavamsa—The Great Chronicle of Buddhas by Ven. Mingun Sayadaw

A manual of Budhism, in its modern development by Hardy, Robert Spence, 1803-1868

There is nothing about any such devatā in the Piṭakas. Hīnaṭi-kumburē takes it to mean the god who took the outward appearance of the four visions-an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a recluse. But in that story—which is not related in the Piṭakas of the Buddha, though it is referred to in connection with him at Buddhavaṃsa XXVI, p. 16—the god does not speak. The only god whose words are said, in any of the later Pāli legends, to have agitated the Bodisat’s heart at that moment, was the Evil One himself; and that only in one version of the legend, the Pāli authority for which I cannot give. It is in Hardy’s ‘Manual,’ p. 157, where the speech of the Evil One, placed at Jātaka I, 63 at a later time, is said to have been made at the moment of the Renunciation. Even if it be not a mere blunder of Hardy’s to put it at that time, still it cannot be the speech referred to by our author. For the startling doctrine that the Evil One himself was one of the Bodisat’s teachers would never have been smuggled in, as it were, by concealing the identity of the spirit referred to under p. 46 the generic term of devatā, Now in the Fo-pan-hin-tsi-cin (Nanjio, No. 680), a Chinese work of the beginning of the seventh century A. D., we find in the sixteenth kwuen or chapter (if one may trust the abstract given in Beal’s ‘Romantic Legend,’ p. 131) that a Devaputra named Tsao-ping is said to have spoken to the Bodisat at the moment of the Renunciation. It is scarcely open to doubt that our author had in his mind an earlier form of that episode. But if so it is the only proved case of his having Sanskrit, and not Pāli works, as his authority.

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Sabbamitra is given in the Thera Gāthā, I, 150, as the name of a Thera, and in the Divyāvadana, p. 420, as the name of Asoka’s herald or court crier.

  1. Sabbamitta Thera. He belonged to a brahmin family of Savatthi, and entered the Order after seeing the Buddhas acceptance of Jetavana. He dwelt in the forest, meditating. Once, on his way to Savatthi to worship the Buddha, he saw a fawn caught in a trappers net. The doe, though not in the net, remained near, out of love for her young, yet not daring to approach the snare. The Thera was much moved by the thought of all the suffering which was caused by love. Farther on he saw bandits wrapping in straw a man whom they had caught and were preparing to set on fire. The Thera was filled with anguish, and, developing insight, won arahantship. He uttered, in his anguish, the two verses included in Thag. 149 50. He preached to the bandits and they joined the Order under him.
    In the time of Tissa Buddha, he was a hunter who lived on game. One day, the Buddha, out of compassion for him, left three of his footprints outside his hut. The hunter saw them, and, owing to good deeds done in the past, recognized them as the Buddhas, and offered to them koranda flowers. After death he was born in Tavatimsa (ThagA.i.269f). His Apadana verses are given in two places under the name of Korandapupphiya (q.v.). Ap.ii.383, 434; cf. Sugandha Thera.
  2. Sabbamitta. An eminent teacher belonging to the udicca brahmanakula. He was extremely learned, and was the second teacher employed by Suddhodana to teach the Buddha in his youth. Mil. p. 236.
  3. Sabbamitta. The constant attendant of Kassapa Buddha. D.ii.7; Bu.xxv.39; J.i.43.
  4. Sabbamitta. A king of Savatthi. See the Kumbha Jataka (No. 512). He is identified with Ananda. J.v.20.