We can only guess what was the religious and moral atmosphere in which the child grew up.  There were certainly Brahmans in the Sakya territory:  everyone had heard of their Vedic lore, their ceremonies and their claims to superiority.  But it is probable that their influence was less complete here than further west[305] and that even before this time they encountered a good deal of scepticism and independent religious sentiment.  This may have been in part military impatience of priestly pedantry, but if the Sakyas were not submissive sheep, their waywardness was not due to want of interest in religion.  A frequent phrase in the Buddha’s discourses speaks of the “highest goal of the holy life for the sake of which clansmen leave their homes and go forth into homelessness.”  The religious mendicant seemed the proper incarnation of this ideal to which Kshatriyas as well as Brahmans aspired, and we are justified in supposing that the future Buddha’s thoughts would naturally turn towards the wandering life.  The legend represents him as carefully secluded from all disquieting sights and as learning the existence of old age, sickness and death only by chance encounters which left a profound impression.  The older texts do not emphasize this view of his mental development, though they do not preclude it.  It is stated incidentally that his parents regretted his abandonment of worldly life and it is natural to suppose that they may have tried to turn his mind to secular interests and pleasures[306].  His son, Rahula, is mentioned several times in the Pitakas but his wife only once and then not by name but as “the princess who was the mother of Rahula[307].”  His separation from her becomes in the later legend the theme of an affecting tale but the scanty allusions to his family found in the Pitakas are devoid of sentimental touches.  A remarkable passage is preserved in the Anguttara Nikaya[308] describing his feelings as a young man and may be the origin of the story[309] about the four visions of old age, sickness, death and of peace in the religious life.  After describing the wealth and comfort in which he lived[310], he says that he reflected how people feel repulsion and disgust at the sight of old age, sickness and death.  But is this right?  “I also” he thought “am subject to decay and am not free from the power of old age, sickness and death.  Is it right that I should feel horror, repulsion and disgust when I see another in such plight?  And when I reflected thus, my disciples, all the joy of life which there is in life died within me.”

No connected account of his renunciation of the world has been found in the Pitakas but[311] people are represented as saying that in spite of his parents’ grief he “went out from the household life into the homeless state” while still a young man.  Accepted tradition, confirmed by the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, says that he retired from worldly life when he was twenty-nine years old.  The event is also commemorated in a poem of the Sutta-Nipata[312] which reads like a very ancient ballad.