3. Ten months having passed (a Buddha always takes ten), the queen expressed a desire to walk in a beautiful garden called Lumbini; and, with the king's ready permission, proceeded thither with her attendants. In this garden the hour of her delivery came on. Standing under a tree (the ficus religiosa), which courteously lowered its branches that she might hold on by them during labor, she gave birth to the child who was afterwards to be the first of humankind. Gods from heaven received him when born, and he himself at once took several steps forward, and exclaimed: "This is my last birth—there shall be to me no other state of existence: I am the greatest of all beings." Ananda, his cousin, and afterwards his disciple, was born at the same moment. Maya, notwithstanding her excellent health, died seven days after her child's birth. This was not from any physical infirmity, but because it is the invariable rule that the mother of a Buddha should die at that exact time. The reason of this, according to the Lalitavistara, is, that when the Buddha became a wandering monk her heart would break. Other respectable authorities assert, that the womb in which a Bodhisattva has lain is like a sanctuary where a relic is enshrined. "No human being can again occupy it, or use it" (P. A., No. III. p. 27). Maya was born again in one of the celestial regions, and the infant was confided to her sister, his aunt Prajapati, or Gautami, who was assisted in the care of her charge by thirty-two nurses. He was christened Sarvarthasiddha, usually shortened into Siddhartha. He is also known as Gautama Buddha, by which name he is distinguished from other Buddhas: as Sakyamuni, the hermit of the Sakya race; as the Tathâgata, he who walks in the footsteps of his predecessors; as Bhagavat, Lord; and by other honorific titles.
Soon after the birth of the Bodhisattva, he was visited and adored by a very eminent Rishi, or hermit, known as Asita (or Kapiladevila), who predicted his future greatness, but wept at the thought that he himself was too old to see the day when the law of salvation would be taught by the infant whom he had come to contemplate.
4. When the appropriate age for the marriage of the young prince arrived, a wife, possessing all the perfections requisite for so excellent a husband, was sought. She was found in a maiden named Gopa (or Yasodhara), the daughter of Dandapani, one of the Sakya race. An unexpected obstacle, however, arose. The father of the lovely Gopa complained that Siddhartha's education had been grossly neglected, and that he was wanting alike in literary accomplishments and in muscular proficiency—things which were invariably demanded of the husbands of Sakya princesses. It does, indeed, appear that Suddhodana had taken little pains to cultivate his son's abilities, and that he had mainly confined himself to the care of his personal safety by surrounding him with attendants. Accordingly, he asked the prince whether he thought he could exhibit his skill in those branches of knowledge, the mastery of which Dandapani had declared to be a necessary condition of his consent. Siddhartha assured his father that he could; and in a regular competitive examination, which was thereupon held, he completely defeated the other princes, not only in writing, arithmetic, and such matters, but in wrestling and archery. In the last art, especially, he gained a signal victory, by easily wielding a bow which none of the others could manage.
5. Gopa was now won, and conducted by her husband to a magnificent palace, where, surrounded by a vast harem of beautiful women, he spent, some years of his life in the enjoyment of excessive luxury. But worldly pleasure was not to retain him long in its embrace.
6. A crisis in his life was now approaching. Suddhodana had been warned that Siddhartha would assume the ascetic character if four objects were to meet his sight; an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and a recluse. Suddhodana, who would have much preferred his son being a universal monarch to his becoming a Buddha, anxiously endeavored to guard him from coming across these things. But all was in vain. One day, when driving in the town, he perceived a wrinkled, decrepit, and miserable old man. Having inquired of the coachman what this strange creature was, and having learnt from him that he was only suffering the general fate of humanity, the Bodhisattva was much affected; and, full of sad thoughts, ordered his chariot to be turned homewards. Meeting on two other occasions, likewise when driving, with a man emaciated by sickness, and with a corpse, he was led to still further reflections on the wretchedness of the conditions under which we live. Prepared by these meditations, he yielded completely to the tendencies aroused within him when, on a fourth excursion, he came across a monk. The aspect of this man—his calmness, his dignity, his downcast eyes, his decent deportment—filled him with desire to abandon the world like him.
The die was cast. Nothing could now retain the Bodhisattva, at this time a young man of nine-and-twenty, from the course that approved itself to his conscience. In vain did his father cause his palace to be surrounded with guards. In vain did the ladies of the harem (acting under instructions) deploy their most ravishing arts to captivate and to amuse him. His resolution was finally fixed by a singular circumstance. The beautiful damsels who ministered to him had sought to engage his attention by an exhibition of the most graceful dancing, accompanied by music, displaying their forms before his eyes as they executed their varied movements. But the Bodhisattva, deep in his meditations, was wholly unaffected. He fell asleep; and the women, baffled in their attempts and wearied out, soon followed his example. But in the course of the night the prince awoke. And then the sight of these girls, slumbering in all sorts of ungainly and ungraceful postures, utterly disgusted him. Summoning a courtier, named Chandaka, he ordered him at once to prepare his favorite horse Kantaka, that he might quit the city of his fathers, and lead the life of a humble recluse. But before thus abandoning his home, there was one painful parting to be gone through. One tie still held him to the world. His wife had just become a mother. Anxious to see his infant son, Rahula, before his departure, he gently opened the door of his wife's apartment. He found her sleeping with one hand over the head of the child. He would fain have taken a last look at his little boy, but fearing that if he withdrew the mother's hand she would awake and hinder his departure, he retired without approaching the bed. In the dead of night, mounted on Kantaka, and with the one attendant whom he had taken into the secret, he managed to leave Kapilavastu unperceived, never to return to it again till he had attained the full dignity of a Buddha.
7. Having sent back Chandaka with the horse, the Bodhisattva commenced, alone and unaided, a course of austerities fitted to prepare him for his great duty. He tried Brahminical teachers, but was soon dissatisfied with their doctrine. Five of the disciples of one of these teachers followed him for six years in the homeless and wandering life he now began. He adopted the most rigid asceticism, reducing his body to the last degree of feebleness and emaciation. But this too discovered itself to his mind as an error. He took to eating again, and regained his strength, whereupon the five disciples left him, viewing him as a man who had weakly abandoned his principles.
8. After this period of gradual approach to the required perfection the Bodhisattva went to Bodhimanda, the place appointed for his reception of the Buddhaship. Here he had to withstand a furious attack by the demon Mara, who first endeavored to annihilate him by his armies, and then to seduce him by the fascination of his three daughters. But Gautama withstood his male and female adversaries with equal calmness and success. Of the latter he had possibly had enough in his princely palace.
9. All these trials having been surmounted, he placed himself under the Bodhi (or Intelligence) tree, and there, engaging in the most intense meditations, gradually reached the intellectual and moral height towards which he had long been climbing. He was now in possession of Bodhi, or that complete and perfect knowledge which constitutes a Buddha. He was thus fit to teach the law of salvation, but the Lalitavistra represents him as still doubting for a moment whether he should engage in a task which he feared would be thankless and unavailing. Men, he thought, would be incapable of receiving so sublime a doctrine, and he would incur fatigue and make exertions in vain. Silence and solitude recommended themselves at this moment to his spirit. But from a resolution so disastrous he was turned aside by the intercession of the god Brahma.
10. He proceeded accordingly to "turn the Wheel of the Law," or to preach to others, during the forty-five remaining years of his long life, the truths he had arrived at himself. The current lives speak, in their exaggerated manner, of his magnificent receptions by the kings whose countries he visited, and of the thousands of converts whom he made by his preaching, or who, in technical language, obtained Nirvâna through him. His father and other members of his family were among his followers. But among the first-fruits of his teaching were the five Brahmins who had abandoned him when he had relaxed in his ascetic habits. These, on first perceiving him, spoke of him with contempt as a glutton and a luxurious fellow spoilt by softness. But his personal presence filled them with admiration, and they at once acknowledged his perfect wisdom. During this time the two orders of monks and nuns, with their strict regulations enforcing continence and temperance, were founded. Gautama's aunt and nurse, Prajapati, was the first abbess; the Buddha, who had intended to exclude women from his order, having consented to admit them at her request. Rahula, his son, received the tonsure.