Essays Lectures on Religion of Hindu Vol 02

Author(s): H H Wilson
Publisher: Trubner and Company London

Page 18

NOTICE OF
GOTTAMA, or SÁKYA,
MAITREE, MAITREYA, possibly the other three are regarded as Buddhas of a different Kalpa, or period, and therefore only were omitted in the list furnished to Capt. MAHONY (Asiatic Research. VII, 32): the Nepal enumeration, however, is not a mere provincial peculiarity, nor of very modern date, and the same must bave prevailed in Hindustan, when here were Bauddhas in the country. Hemachandra, who wrote his vocabulary, probably in Guzerat, in the 12th century, specifies the same Buddhas as the Sapta Buddha Stotra, or Vipaśyi, Sikhi, Viswabhú, Krakuchhanda, Kanchana, Káśyapa, and Sákya Sinha*.
How many of these Buddhas are real personages, is very questionable. KÁśYAPA is a character known to the orthodox system, and perhaps had once existence: he seems to have been the chief instrument in extending civilisation along the Himalaya and Caucasian mountains, as far as we may judge from the traditions of Nepal and Kashmir, and the many traces of his name to be met with along those ranges. SÁKYA, as identifiable with GAUTAMA, was possibly the founder of the Bauddha system as it now exists, in the sixth or seventh century before Christianity. The names of the cities in which these Buddhas are said to have been born, or to have appeared in a human form, are not verifiable, with the exception
* [śl. 236.]