‘This man,’ said the charioteer, ‘devotes himself to charity, and restrains his appetites and his bodily desires. He hurts nobody, but does good to all, and is full of sympathy for all.’
Then the prince asked the man himself to give an account of his own condition.
He answered:—‘I am called a homeless ascetic; I have forsaken the world, relatives, and friends; I seek deliverance for myself and desire the salvation of all creatures, and I do harm to none.’
After hearing these words, the prince went to his father and said, ‘I wish to become a wandering ascetic (parivrājika) and to seek Nirvāna; all worldly things, O king! are changeable and transitory.’
Such is an epitome of the legendary story of the ‘four visionary appearances,’ so called because they are supposed to have been divine visions or appearances, miraculously produced. The remainder of the legendary life of Gautama Buddha is interesting and here and there not without some historical value, and portions of it I now add in an abridged form.
Very shortly after the occurrences just described, Gautama receives intelligence of the birth of his son Rāhula. This is the first momentous crisis of his life, and Gautama remains for a long time lost in profound thought. He sees in his child the strongest of all fetters, binding him to family and home. But his mind is made up. He must fly at once, or be for ever held in bondage. Around him gather the beautiful women of his father’s household, striving by their blandishments to divert him from his purpose; but in vain. He seeks the chamber of his wife, and finds her asleep with her hand on the head of his infant son. He longs for a last embrace; but fearing to arouse her suspicions hurries away. Outside, his favourite horse is waiting to aid his flight. He accomplishes the first stage of what Buddhists call with pride the Mahābhinishkramaṇa, ‘the great going forth from home;’ but not without overcoming other still more formidable trials. For Māra, the evil deity who tempts men to indulge their passions (see [p. 120]), makes himself visible, and promises the prince all the glories of empire if he will return to the pleasures of worldly life.
Finding all his allurements disregarded, Māra alters his method of attack; he fills the air with mighty thunderings, and creates on the road before the youthful fugitive’s eyes apparitions of torrents, lofty mountains, and blazing conflagrations. But nothing alarms or deters him. ‘I would rather,’ he exclaims, ‘be torn to pieces limb by limb, or be burnt in a fiery furnace, or be ground to pieces by a falling mountain than forego my fixed purpose for one single instant.’
Arrived at a safe distance from his father’s territory, he exchanges garments with a passing beggar, cuts off his own hair with a sword, and assumes the outward aspect and character of a wandering ascetic. The hair does not fall to the ground but is taken up to the Trayastriṉṡas heaven ([p. 120]), and worshipped by the gods.
His first halting-place is Rāja-gṛiha (now Rāj-gīr), the chief city of Magadha, which, with Kosala (Oudh, pp. [21], [48]), afterwards became the holy land of Buddhism. There he attaches himself as a disciple to two Brāhmans named Āḷāra (in Sanskṛit Ārāḍa, with epithet Kālāpa or Kālāma) and Uddaka (Udraka, also written Rudraka, and called Rāma-putta, Mahā-vagga I. 6. 3), who imbue him with their own philosophical tenets and theory of salvation. Sufficient evidence exists to warrant a belief in this part of the story.
No place in India abounds in more interesting Buddhistic remains than Rāja-gṛiha (about 40 miles south-east of Patnā), proving that it was one of the most sacred places of Buddhism, consecrated by some of its most cherished associations. Its Pāli name is Rāja-gaha. It may be conjectured that the connexion between the metaphysics of Buddhism and those of Brāhmanism was due to Gautama’s intercourse with the Brāhmans of this district, and to the ideas he thus imbibed at the earliest stage of his career.