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Then, Siddhartha knew that the game was over, that he could not play it any more. Shivers ran over his body, inside of him, so he felt, something had died. That entire day, he sat under the mango-tree, thinking of his father, thinking of Govinda, thinking of Gotama. Did he have to leave them to become a Kamaswami? He still sat there, when the night had fallen.
One aspect of the story of Sâkyamuni and his antecedent births thus led to the idea that all may become Buddhas. An equally natural development in another direction created celestial and superhuman Bodhisattvas. The Hinayana held that Gotama, before his last birth, dwelt in the Tushita heaven enjoying the power and splendour of an Indian god and it looked forward to the advent of Maitreya.
But most of all, I have learned here from this river and from my predecessor, the ferryman Vasudeva. He was a very simple person, Vasudeva, he was no thinker, but he knew what is necessary just as well as Gotama, he was a perfect man, a saint." Govinda said: "Still, oh Siddhartha, you love a bit to mock people, as it seems to me. I believe in you and know that you haven't followed a teacher.
Before the advent of Islam, Kashmir was a secluded but cultured land. Its pleasant climate and beautiful scenery, said to have been praised by Gotama himself, attracted and stimulated thinkers and it had some importance in the history of Buddhism and of the Pâncarâtra as well as for Śivaism. It is connected with the Buddhist sect called Sarvâstivâdins and in this case the circumstances seem clear.
Gotama spent his life in preaching and by his personal exertions spread his doctrines over Bihar and Oudh but for two centuries after his death we know little of the history of Buddhism. Buddhism is often criticized as a gloomy and unpractical creed, suited at best to stoical and scholarly recluses.
Europeans are ready enough to admit that Buddhism is changeable and easily corrupted but it is not singular in that respect . I doubt if Lhasa and Tantrism are further from the teaching of Gotama than the Papacy, the Inquisition, and the religion of the German Emperor, from the teaching of Christ.
Buddha wished to convert Kaundinya and his four companions; but they, being aware of his intention, said to one another, "This Sramana Gotama for six years continued in the practice of painful austerities, eating daily only a single hemp-seed, and one grain of rice, without attaining to the Path of Wisdom; how much less will he do so now that he has entered again among men, and is giving the reins to the indulgence of his body, his speech, and his thoughts!
It was considered proper that an earnest-minded man should renounce the world and become a wanderer. In doing this and in collecting round him a band of disciples who had a common mode of life Gotama created nothing new. He merely did with conspicuous success what every contemporary teacher was doing.
But are we to believe that the stories, true or romantic, originally told of Gotama were transferred to his mythical forerunners or that before his birth there was a Buddha legend to which the account of his career was accommodated? Probably both processes went on simultaneously. The notices of the Jain saints show that there must have been such legends and traditions independent of Gotama.
Among the multitudinous philosophic, psychologic, biologic systems that have waxed and waned, dazzled and deluded, from the first utterances of Gotama, to the very latest of the advanced Evolutionists, is there any other than the Christian solution of the triple-headed riddle Whence? Wherefore?
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