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Updated: June 28, 2025
When we proceed, however, to endeavour to trace the connexion of that Brahmanical rishi with the Sakya house, by means of 1323, 1468, 1469, and other historical works in Nanjio's Catalogue, we soon find that Indian histories have no surer foundation than the shifting sand; see E. H., on the name Sakya, pp. 108, 109.
In demonstrating that life is evil, that rebirth is evil too, that to be born even a god is evil still, in demonstrating these things, while insisting that all else, Buddhism included, is but vanity, it fractured the charm of error in which man had been confined. Sakya saw men born and reborn in hell.
Who that reads the story of Sakya Munyi can doubt that through the Prince who gave up kingdom, throne, and earthly ties for the sake of downtrodden humanity, a prophetic gleam of heavenly light pierced the darkness of the future, and pointed to the distant Cross?
Among other Buddhistic peoples "Gotama" and "Gotama Buddha" are the more frequent designations. It is not easy to account for the rise of the surname Gotama in the Sakya family, as Oldenberg acknowledges. He says that "the Sakyas, in accordance with the custom of Indian noble families, had borrowed it from one of the ancient Vedic bard families." Dr. Dr.
Gautama was a prince of the Sakya tribe, and of the Rajput caste. He was born 620 B. C. and lived in great wealth and luxury. Driving in his pleasure grounds one day he met a man crippled with age; then a second man smitten with an incurable disease; then a corpse, and finally a fakir or ascetic, walking in a calm, dignified, serene manner.
Thereupon, having his eyes fixed upon me with the strangest expression in their gray depths, Nayland Smith said a singular thing. "Pronounce, slowly, the words Sâkya Mûni," he directed. I stared at him, scarce crediting my senses; but "I mean it!" he rapped. "Do as I tell you." "Sâkya Mûni," I said, in ever increasing wonder. Smith laughed unmirthfully.
We can only guess what was the religious and moral atmosphere in which the child grew up. There were certainly Brahmans in the Sâkya territory: everyone had heard of their Vedic lore, their ceremonies and their claims to superiority.
He had been born in the Sakya house, to do for the world what the character of all his past births required, and he had done it. They could no more see him, the World-honoured one. Sudana or Sudatta was the name of the Bodhisattva in the birth which preceded his appearance as Sakyamuni or Gotama, when he became the Supreme Buddha.
And thirdly, the possibility of vicarious moral action. On the first, I need only remark that one of those legends of Sakya Muni, which are so full of moral meaning, is beautified by this selflessness. But it is the third point which chiefly concerns us here because of the great spiritual comfort which it conveys. The extent to which this idea is pressed may, to some, be bewildering.
According to this account we may say that the diffusion of our great doctrines in the East began from the setting up of this image. If it had not been through that Maitreya, the great spiritual master who is to be the successor of the Sâkya, who could have caused the 'Three Precious Ones, to be proclaimed so far, and the people of those border lands to know our Law?
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