Before leaving the personality of the Buddha, we must say a word about the more legendary portions of his biography, for though of little importance for history they have furnished the chief subjects of Buddhist art and influenced the minds of his followers as much as or more than the authentic incidents of his career[393].  The later legend has not distorted the old narrative.  It is possible that all its incidents may be founded on stories known to the compilers of the Pitakas, though this is not at present demonstrable, but they are embellished by an unstinted use of the supernatural and of the hyperbole usual in Indian poetry.  The youthful Buddha moves through showers of flowers and an atmosphere crowded with attendant deities.  He cannot even go to school without an escort of ten thousand children and a hundred thousand maidens and astonishes the good man who proposes to teach him the alphabet by suggesting sixty-four systems of writing.

The principal scenes in this legend are as follows.  The Bodhisattva, that is the Buddha to-be, resides in the Tusita Heaven and selects his birth-place and parentage.  He then enters the womb of his mother Maya in the shape of a white elephant, which event she sees in a dream.  Brahmans are summoned and interpret the vision to mean that her son will be a Universal Monarch or a Buddha.  When near her confinement Maya goes to visit her parents but on the way brings forth her son in the Lumbini grove.  As she stands upright holding the bough of a tree, he issues from her side without pain to her and is received by deities, but on touching the ground, takes seven steps and says, “I am the foremost in the world.”  On the same day are born several persons who play a part in his life—­his wife, his horse, Ananda, Bimbisara and others.  Asita does homage to him, as does also his father, and it is predicted that he will become a Buddha and renounce the world.  His father in his desire to prevent this secludes him in the enjoyment of all luxury.  At the ploughing festival he falls into a trance under a tree and the shadow stands still to protect him and does not change.  Again his father does him homage.  He is of herculean strength and surpasses all as an archer.  He marries his cousin Yasodhara, when sixteen years old.  Then come the four visions, which are among the scenes most frequently depicted in modern sacred art.  As he is driving in the palace grounds the gods show him an old man, a sick man, a corpse and a monk of happy countenance.  His charioteer explains what they are and he determines to abandon the world.  It was at this time that his son was born and on hearing the news he said that a new fetter now bound him to worldly life but still decided to execute his resolve.  That night he could take no pleasure in the music of the singing women who were wont to play to him and they fell asleep.  As he looked at their sleeping forms he felt disgust and ordered Channa, his charioteer, to saddle Kanthaka, a gigantic white horse, eighteen cubits long from head to tail.  Meanwhile he went to his wife’s room and took a last but silent look as she lay sleeping with her child.