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open, which may emphasize the miraculous character of the birth of the Bodhisatta. From the point of view of psychology of religion, a birth through the (right) side is, on the one hand, a shift from below, i.e. from the impure, upward, just as the birth of a hero takes place in a clean way, as is stressed in the texts.125 On the other hand, it can be considered a degradation of the status of the mother, as higher beings are marked by an out-of-the-way coming into existence. Such an exceptional birth is known, apart from the case of Indra's mother, e.g. in the Matsya Pur 157,39 sq., when Umā, Siva's consort, gives birth to the six Kārttikeyas, and of Süravantī bearing Birobā (see Sontheimer 1989a: 104). A still higher upward shift is shown by a Nepalese statuette of the 18th century that features the Bodhisatta jumping from his mother's armpit like Kaksīvat in the Buddhacarita I 10126 (cf. already the seasons, ghi, etc. produced from Prajāpati's armpits).127
As soon as the gods have placed the Bodhisatta on the earth he takes seven strides to the north, reminding us, on the one hand, of a king's three strides at his rājas ūya,128 thus imitating Vişnu's three strides in the RV, for, this god clears the way for somaholic Indra's battle against Vrtra, the primaeval Ouroboros, and, in this way, favours the cosmic order that Indra is about to establish. Further, Gotama was after all a prince who could also have become a ruler.
Buddhism adopts this battle, adapting it as the Bodhisatta's battle with Māra; the former by virtue of his final emancipation emerges victorious.129 At the same time, one cannot help but think of the marriage ritual, though it seems difficult to connect it with the Bodhisatta's strides. The commentators explain them allegorically and thus, for us, unsatisfactorily. They may, therefore, be taken as a step up of Vişnu's strides, 130 rather than of those of Alexander the Great in a Caucasian folk tale. 131 Keith (1920: 503) compared the seven steps of the young Gotama to those of the mother-to-be of Christ and holds them to be
Church (4th cent.) already mentions this, adding that the mother is a virgin. See
also, e.g. Neumann 1962: 133. 125 DN II 14; Windisch, Id., 127 and 138. 126 See Bollée 1983: 265 and cf., e.g. Franz, von 1982: 75. 127 TB 2,2,9,7; see Minard 1956 $874; 918. 128 TS 1,8,10g. 129 See Bollée 1977: 371-381. 130 Kirfel 1920: 23* "auf dic Idee der Dreizahl folgte die der Siebenzahl." 131 As Ruben 1944: 70 thinks referring to Dirr 1920, No. 259. - Eva Tornow has
reminded me of Sakuntala 7,33, where Mārīca prophesies that his grandson will be a cakravartin and rathenanuddhāta-stimita-gatinā tirna-jaladhih/ purā saptadvipām jayati vasudham a-pratiratah.// That would be an interesting counterpart to the Bodhisatta here, also because of tīrna- jaladhih. Pāli literature, however, to my knowledge, does not know of an earth consisting of seven islands the idea apparently being brahminic (see Kirfel 1920: 57).