________________
THE GREAT RENUNCIATION.
.
121
(the Powerful), grew rice and maintained a close connection with the more powerful kingdom of Kosala (Oudh) to the south-west, which ultimately absorbed them. Although it has been widely represented that the Buddha was a king's son, the oldest records only mention the father as Suddhodana, a wealthy landowner, His youth and one of whose wives, Maya, of the same tribe, early life. died soon after the birth of her son, who was named Siddhattha, and was often called Sakya, or Sakya-muni, the Sakya sage; this event took place probably somewhere about 500 B.C. He passed his youth in Kapila, the capital of the Sakyas, and there is no early tradition of his having become a Vedic student; rather the events of his after-life tend the other way, exhibiting him as a reformer and an opponent of Brahmanic pretensions. He appears to have been married, and to have had one son, Rahula, who became one of his disciples;
SEATED FIGURE OF BUDDHA. but there is no absolutely certain detail about the reasons and circumstances which led him at the age of twenty-nine to The Great abandon his home, and become a wandering Renunciation. ascetic, thenceforward known as the ascetic Gautama (pronounced Gowtama). One of the earliest records represents him as having felt deeply and often meditated on the weakness and decay of old age, and the horror of
