Actually, the Mahavastu says that Moggali was the father of Moggaliputtatissa anyway…but other commentary identifies Moggali as the mother of Mahamoggallana, it’s me who’s confused. 
Maybe it’s both. Moggali was the father, and Moggali is a derived name for the mother of Mahāmoggallāna via reverse engineering the name. IDK. This is all quite confusing lol.
Considering the intermarriage question, I think this may just be it? Again, IDK. It’s not clear to me how someone goes from the brahmin->khattiya caste, especially in a non-brahminical oligarchy. That said, the Sakyans being mixed, this could just be how their kingdom started, that is, people deemed khattiyas because they were mixed and in non-Aryan territory, and yet with some Vedic heritage and perhaps some inherited brahminical gotras. Ādicca is their dynastic lineage and shared cultural heritage, but their personal gotras may be Vedic.
Most Western people in colonized countries like the US or Australia have surnames from other cultures and yet are completely detached and inherit the customs and ideas from their nation. The Buddha and the other khattiyas of Shakya may have culturally been of the Ādicca dynasty, and yet had Brahminical gotras from past mixing with Aryans. Their homeland wasn’t predominantly Vedic, so this would mostly be irrelevant to their lives, and yet the name reflects the connection.
Mettā
How could we know for sure the Sakyans is a non-Vedic group?
Historical records from the Aryans and knowledge of Northern India at the time, etc. I’d recommend checking out the discussion in the post on Snp 3.11 Nālaka Sutta here recently by Bhante Sujato. In the comments there are some articles and discussion of this. Also, even this whole idea of a khattiya with a potentially brahminical gotta (Gotama) is itself super suggestive of the non-Aryan lands before the Vedic culture took over northern India.
Mettā
These are really interesting. I’ve never thought of the name gotama in connection with these likely pre-Aryan contexts before, but it’s pretty compelling.
So we have:
- a khattiya family called Gotama (unless it is after all a personal name)
- a snake family called “dark Gotamaka” (which BTW means “dark dark cow”!)
- A well-known Gotamaka shrine in Vesali (a shrine to that same snake/naga?)
Let’s add on to that the existence among the samanas of a “gotamaka”, bearing in mind that these are mostly pre- or non-brahmanical:
nigaṇṭho … muṇḍasāvako … jaṭilako … paribbājako … māgaṇḍiko … tedaṇḍiko … āruddhako … gotamako … devadhammiko
There’s also a Gotamaka Gorge near Rajagaha (pli-tv-bu-vb-ss8:1.4.25). So we have the name Gotamaka attested in Vesali and Rajagaha. Note too that the verses of the snake families prominently use the “eastern” or “magadhan” locative plural ending -ehi.
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According to Jain tradition, the Gautama here is Indrabhuti Gautama, a chief disciple of Mahavira from Brahmin caste. But his first name (Indrabhuti) is from commentaries and never mentioned in the early Jain sutras, so some people think his portrayal is taken from our Gotama the Buddha (or perhaps, the wildest theory, the Buddha was a Jain disciple before giving up the asceticism and discovering the Buddhist middle path):
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There is an unknown Sramana sect called Gotamaka mentioned in AN 5.301 among the well-known Nigantha (Jain) and Ajivaka sect. Perhaps the sect founder name is Gotama, but we cannot sure it is a personal name or family name. If I don’t mistake, Rhys Davis thought it was a sect founded by Devadatta…
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I’ve heard he is sometimes called ‘buddha’ in Western India (Śvetāmbara Jainism), but as a ‘disciple of the Jains’ he is certainly not the heroic, emaciated Bodhisatta. His popularity and overall friendliness bring him closer to the likes of Gaṇeśa, Budai, Phra Sangkachai… In some depictions he is even chubby, for a Jain:
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It makes me think of the kaala naag, the very black cobra in the video with the Sinhalese letter “pa” on its hood.
It’s interesting that the Divyavadana associates the naga kings Krsna and Gautamaka with the western ocean, far from Magadha.
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Yeah, good catch there as well. “Muṇḍasāvako” is interesting in mentioning muṇḍa again.
Not quite sure what to make of it all as of now.
Mettā
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Krsna could be ‘kaṇhā’ as well, here, so that adds up. Interesting catch! There definitely seems to be something going on with the name ‘Gotama’/‘Gautama’ in the east.
Mettā
In your translation of this at AN 5.294, you say “a follower of Gotamaka.” Would this not be “a follower of Gotama,” considering the -ka suffix is being added at the end of all of the names to derive the name of the follower? You translate “māgaṇḍiko” as “a follower of Māgaṇḍiya” for instance. Or is there reason to think that this is “a follower of Gotamaka” still?
Also, the Gotamaka shrine was apparently to a yakkha named Gotamaka. This makes sense considering yakkhas were the tree-spirits and were quite popular among the indigenous religious practices/adopted into the Aryan cosmology loosely it seems. So we have snakes and yakkhas named Gotamaka.
Mettā
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And also in the Deccan, as apparently Gotami is another name for the Godavari river…
yes, you’re right, I’ll correct it.
How is this “wild”? Everything about the Bodhisatta’s austerities sounds exactly like the Jains; he said that he believed that pleasure was only gained thru pain; and in the Deer Park, where he met the five ascetics, there is today a Jain temple. He was at the very least following a path that was very similar to Jainism.
Fascinating! But wouldn’t that strengthen his association with the historical Buddha, who rejected extremes of fasting?
Hol up, where is this from?
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“Wild” because the Bodhisatta’s austerities mentioned in Buddhist suttas are not specifically Nigantha or Jain practices. This is concluded from what has been discussed in another topic here:
And I have read that many scholars and historians dismiss the probability that the Bodhisatta was a Jain disciple before his enlightenment.
Do you suggest that the Sakyans were not Aryans?
I’m not suggesting they weren’t Aryans, historical records and archaeological evidence makes it clear that they weren’t for a long time after the Buddha’s life. The Sakyans were considered ‘mixed’ between pre-Aryan aboriginal peoples and some Aryans. Culturally, they did not accept the authority of the brahmins
/ Aryan religion or the caste system. The majority of them would have likely been non-Aryan (though its hard to say statistics exactly of course), and there would have been mixed and newer Aryan immigrants coming in. Their neighbors, such as the Koliyans, Mallas, etc. were the same.
Mettā
Okay, fair enough, some of these practices are not Jainish, but many, perhaps most are. One thing about it is that it must clearly describe a series of different practices done over an extended period of time, for example, the different kinds of garments.
Probably he tried many different things, but that doesn’t preclude the fact that among those things were Jain practices, and hence he could well have spent a period of time as a Jain ascetic. It was six years, plenty of time to do lots of things.
The Prince Bodhi Sutta (MN 85) says:
“Prince, before my awakening—when I was still unawakened but intent on awakening—I too thought: ‘Pleasure is not gained through pleasure; pleasure is gained through pain.’
Which is a fundamental Jain tenet.
One thing I think is that we are probably too quick to assume that people must have belonged to one group or another, or even that there were clearly differentiated groups. Of course to some degree that was the case, but I suspect that there were also a more-or-less floating pool of ascetics with more-or-less greater affiliation with one group or another. It takes time to develop ordination processes that clearly define the in-group.
Which, if it is true, both makes it quite possible that the Bodhisatta both was and was not an actual Jain. Maybe some people thought he was, others that he was not.
Heck, the same thing is even true in modern Buddhism. Poke closely enough at different traditions and you’ll find someone who is regarded at large as being a monastic, but who others say is not really ordained.
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I think this is what must have been going on with the Buddha’s initial teachers (Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta). As you and others have pointed out, there could very well be Upaniṣadic connections here. But I really don’t think they were Upaniṣadic sages in the same sense as we see in the actual Upaniṣads. What we know of their practices and things also seems somewhat different. I get the feeling that they may have been trained in and inherited certain recitation lineages of pre-Upaniṣadic texts, as well as mixed in śramaṇic ideas and their own innovations/meditation practices. Maybe they adopted some contemplative Brahminical ideas in debates and discussions and things.
The same could hold true of the Bodhisatta’s later practices as you point out here as well 
Mettā