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14. THE CONCEPT OF AVATARS
'O Lord Kesava! You took the form of Buddha deva to critisize the Vedas and to rebuke Yajnas, out of Your mercy towards the animals, who were being slaughtered by ritualists for trivial material gain. You are the same Hari, the Lord of all!' Sri Jayadeva 'dazAvatAra' stotra 1.9
Thus according to Jayadeva, the Buddha who criticised the Vedas and the Yajbas is the same Buddha who is the avatar of Vishnu. Helmuth von Glasenapp attributes these developments to a Hindu desire to absorb Buddhism in a peaceful manner, both to win Buddhists to Vishnuism and also to account for the fact that such a significant heresy could exist in India.
However not all scholars are satisfied with such a situation. How can an incarnation teach and establish total foolishness to negate very theistic understanding? For them the only solution is that this Buddha who is the incarnation of Vishnu is not really the historical Buddha. So there must be some other Buddha about whom we don't really have any history. Only we don't know him in history just like all other incarnations have no history. So Buddha can also be pushed back millions of years.
According to Créla Jéva Gosvämé, the Buddha incarnation mentioned in this verses appeared in a different Kali age. Vaisnava Vijaya: The Life History of Mayavadism" by Srila Bhakti Prajnana Kesava Maharaja and there he argues that there are two Buddhas. He bases his argument primarily on the fact that the Bhagavatam mentions the birthplace and parents of the Visnu-avatara Buddha and that these differ from those of Siddhartha Buddha (or Sakya Singha Buddha). Visnu-avatara Buddha was born in Gaya; Siddhartha took birth in Kapilavastu, Nepal. The same argument is presented by Srila B.B. Tirtha Maharaja
MODERN BUDDHA AND VISHNU AVATAR BUDDHA ARE DIFFERENT
http://www.vina.cc/stories/PHILOSOPHICAL/2006/5/modern.buddha.html But Stephen Knapp upholds the opposite view.
"This verse shows that Lord Buddha was an incarnation of the Supreme Being who would appear in Gaya, a town in central India. Nevertheless, some historians may point out that Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, was actually born in Lumbini, Nepal, and that his mother was Queen Mahamaya. Therefore, they might feel that this verse is innacurate. But Siddhartha became the Buddha after he attained spiritual enlightenment during his meditation under the Bo tree in Gaya. This means that his spiritual realization was his second and most important birth. Futhermore, Siddhartha's mother, Queen Mahamaya, died several days after Siddhartha's birth, leaving him to be raised by his grandmother, Anjana. So the prediction in the Bhagavatam is accurate."
(Stephen Knapp. 1997. THE VEDIC PROPHECIES: A NEW LOOK INTO THE FUTURE", page 4.)
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