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The fame of Buddha's teachings soon reached his native city and his father, the old King Suddhodana, yearned to see the son who might have been a great conqueror but who had chosen to be one of the most enlightened teachers that the world has ever seen. So he sent a retinue to greet Buddha and ask him to return to his native city.
Tradition states that she died seven days after his birth and that he was brought up by her sister, Mahâprajâpatî, who was also a wife of Suddhodana. The names of other relatives are preserved, but otherwise the older documents tell us nothing of his childhood and the copious legends of the later church seem to be poetical embellishments.
"The Lord dwelt in the Sakka country near Kapilavatthu in the Banyan Grove. And in the forenoon having put on his robes and taken his alms bowl he went to the home of the Sakka Suddhodana and sat down on a seat prepared for him. "Then the Sakka Suddhodana went to the place where the Lord was and after respectfully saluting him asked for a boon.
'Lord, when the Blessed One gave up the world, it was great pain to me and so it was when Nanda did the same. Great too was my pain when Râhula did it. The love for a son, Lord, cuts into the skin, the flesh, the bones, and reaches the marrow. Let not the preliminary ordination be conferred on a son without his parents' permission. The Buddha assented. Three or four years later Suddhodana died."
Most of the stories of his youth and childhood have a mythical air and make their first appearance in works composed long after his death, but there is no reason to distrust the traditional accounts of his lineage. He was the son of Suddhodana of the Kshatriya clan known as Sâkya or Sâkiya . In later literature his father is usually described as a king but this statement needs qualification.
Hating the five delights that move the world, forsaking virtuous wife and tender child, loving the solitude, he wanders friendless; hard, indeed, for virtuous wife through the long night, cherishing her grief; and now to hear he is a hermit! She inquires not now of the royal Suddhodana if he has seen his son or not!
They, on their part, begged them to be seated, and repeated the law for their peace and comfort. Then forthwith they addressed the Rishis and said: "We have on our minds a subject on which we would ask for advice. There is one who is called Suddhodana râga, a descendant of the famous Ikshvâku family, we are his teacher and his minister, who instruct him in the sacred books as required.
The father, or supposed father, of Sakyamuni. The "eldest son," or "prince" was Sakyamuni, and his mother had no other son. For "his mother," see chap. xvii, note 3. She was a daughter of Anjana or Anusakya, king of the neighbouring country of Koli, and Yasodhara, an aunt of Suddhodana. There appear to have been various intermarriages between the royal houses of Kapila and Koli.
And now the son of Suddhodana, and his virtuous wife Yasodharâ, as time went on, growing to full estate, their child Râhula was born; and then Suddhodana râga considered thus: "My son, the prince, having a son born to him, the affairs of the empire will be handed down in succession, and there will be no end to its righteous government; the prince having begotten a son, will love his son as I love him, and no longer think about leaving his home as an ascetic, but devote himself to the practice of virtue; I now have found complete rest of heart, like one just born to heavenly joys."
According to this standard of authority Gautama was born about the sixth century B.C., as the son and heir of a rajah of the Sakya tribe of Aryans, living about eighty miles north by northwest of Benares. His mother, the principal wife of Kajah Suddhodana, had lived many years without offspring, and she died not long after the birth of this her only son, Siddartha.
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