We have seen that apart from the personality of Gotama, ancient India was familiar with the idea of a Buddha and had even classified the attributes he should possess.  Two styles of biography are therefore possible:  an account of what Gotama actually was and did and an account of what a Buddha is expected to be and do.  This second style prevails in later Buddhist works:  they contain descriptions of the deeds and teaching of a Buddha, adapted to such facts in Gotama’s life as seemed suitable for such treatment or could not be ignored.  Rhys Davids has well compared them to Paradise Regained, but the supernatural element is, after the Indian fashion, more ornate.

The reader will perhaps ask what are the documents describing Gotama’s sayings and doings and what warrant we have for trusting them.  I will treat of this question in more detail in a later chapter and here will merely say that the Pali works called Vinaya or monastic rules and Suttas[294] or sermons recount the circumstances in which each rule was laid down and each sermon preached.  Some narrative passages, such as the Sutta which relates the close of the Buddha’s life and the portion of the Vinaya which tells how he obtained enlightenment and made his first converts, are of considerable length.  Though these narratives are compilations which accepted new matter during several centuries, I see no reason to doubt that the oldest stratum contains the recollections of those who had seen and heard the master.

In basing the following account on the Pali Canon, I do not mean to discredit Sanskrit texts merely because they are written in that language or to deny that many Pali texts contain miraculous and unhistorical narratives[295].  But the principal Sanskrit Sutras such as the Lotus and the Diamond Cutter are purely doctrinal and those texts which profess to contain historical matter, such as the Vinayas translated from Sanskrit into Chinese, are as yet hardly accessible to European scholars.  So far as they are known, they add incidents to the career of the Buddha without altering its main lines, and when the accounts of such incidents are not in themselves improbable they merit consideration.  On the whole these Sanskrit texts are later and more embellished than their Pali counterparts, but it is necessary not to forget the existence of this vast store-house of traditions, which may contain many surprises[296].

Though the Pali texts do not give the story of the Buddha’s life in a connected form, they do give us details about many important events in it and they offer a picture of the world in which he moved.  The idea of biography was unknown to the older Indian literature.  The Brahmanas and Upanishads tell us of the beliefs and practices of their sages, the doctrines they taught and the sacrifices they offered, but they rarely give even an outline of their lives.  And whenever the Hindus write about a man of religion or a philosopher, their weak historical sense and