. It is in the light of such incidents and such temperaments that we should read the story of the Buddha. Could we be transported to India in the days of his preaching, we should probably see a figure very like the portrait given in the more sober parts of the Pitakas, a teacher of great intelligence and personal charm, yet distinctly human. But had we talked about him in the villages which lay along his route, or even in the circle of his disciples, I think we should have heard tales of how Devas visited him and how he was wont to vanish and betake himself to some heaven. The Hindu attributes such feats to a religious leader, as naturally as Europeans would ascribe to him a magnetic personality and a flashing eye.
The Pitakas emphasize the omniscience and sinlessness of the Buddha but contain no trace of the idea that he is God in the Christian or Mahommedan sense. They are consistently non-theistic and it is only later that Buddhas and Bodhisattvas become transformed into beings about whom theistic language can be used. But in those parts of the Pitakas which may be reasonably supposed to contain the ideas of the first century after the Buddha's death, he is constantly represented as instructing Devas and receiving their homage
. In the Khuddaka-pâṭha the spirits are invited to come and do him reverence. He is described as the Chief of the World with all its gods
, and is made to deny that he is a man. If a Buddha cannot be called a Deva rather than a man, it is only because he is higher than both. It is this train of thought which leads later Buddhists
to call him Devâtideva, or the Deva who is above all other Devas, and thus make him ultimately a being comparable with Siva or Vishnu.
The idea that great teachers of mankind appear in a regular series and at stated intervals is certainly older than Gotama,