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famous are translated in the article on Buddha in the Encyclopædia Brittanica. We content ourselves with the simplest and oldest account, giving such facts as help to explain the religious significance of Buddha's life and work among his countrymen. Several of these facts, Buddha's place in society, and the geographical centre of Buddhistic activity, are essential to a true understanding of the relations between Buddhism and Brahmanism.
Whether Buddha's father was king or no has rightly been questioned. The oldest texts do not refer to him as a king's son, and this indicates that his father, who governed the Ç[ra]kya-land, of which the limits have just been specified, [6] was rather a feudal baron or head of a small clan, than an actual king. The Ç[=a]kya power was overthrown and absorbed into that of the king of Oude (Kosala) either in Buddha's own life-time or immediately afterwards. It is only the newer tradition that extols the power and wealth which the Master gave up on renouncing worldly ties, a trait characteristic of all the later accounts, on the principle that the greater was the sacrifice the greater was the glory. Whether kings or mere chieftains, the Ç[ra]kyas were noted as a family that cared little to honor the Brahmanic priests. They themselves claimed descent from Ikshv[=a]ku, the ancient seer-king, son of Manu, and traditionally first king of Ayodh[=a] (Oude). They assumed the name of Gautama, one of the Vedic seers, and it was by the name of the Ascetic Gautama' that Buddha was known to his contemporaries; but his personal name was Siddh[=a]rtha 'he that succeeds in his aim,' prophetic of his life! His mother's name M[ra]y[=a] (illusion) has furnished Senart with material for his sun-theory of Buddha; but the same name is handed down as that of a city, and perhaps means in this sense 'the wonderful.' She is said to have died when her son was still a boy. The boy Siddh[=a]rtha, then, was a warrior r[=a]jput by birth, and possibly had a very indifferent training in Vedic literature, since he is never spoken of as Veda-wise.[7] The future Buddha was twenty-nine when he resolved to renounce the world. He was already married and had a son (R[=a]hula, according to later tradition). The legends of later growth here begin to thicken, telling how, when the future Buddha heard of the birth of his son, he simply said 'a new bond has been forged to hold me to the world'; and how his mind was first awakened to appreciation of sorrow by seeing loathy examples of
