Then he started on horseback attended by Channa and a host of heavenly beings who opened the city gates.  Here he was assailed by Mara the Tempter who offered him universal empire but in vain.  After jumping the river Anoma on his steed, he cut off his long hair with his sword and flinging it up into the air wished it might stay there if he was really to become a Buddha.  It remained suspended; admiring gods placed it in a heavenly shrine and presented Gotama with the robes of a monk.

Not much is added to the account of his wanderings and austerities as given in the Pitakas, but the attainment of Buddhahood naturally stimulates the devout imagination.  At daybreak Gotama sits at the foot of a tree, lighting up the landscape with the golden rays which issue from his person.  Sujara a noble maiden and her servant Purna offer him rice and milk in a golden vessel and he takes no more food for seven weeks.  He throws the vessel into the river, wishing that if he is to become a Buddha it may ascend the stream against the current.  It does so and then sinks to the abode of the Nagas.  Towards evening he walks to the Bodhi-tree and meets a grass-cutter who offers him grass to make a seat.  This he accepts and taking his seat vows that rather than rise before attaining Buddhahood, he will let his blood dry up and his body decay.  Then comes the great assault of the Tempter.  Mara attacks him in vain both with an army of terrible demons and with bands of seductive nymphs.  During the conflict Mara asked him who is witness to his ever having performed good deeds or bestowed alms?  He called on the earth to bear witness.  Earthquakes and thunders responded to the appeal and the goddess of the Earth herself rose and bore testimony.  The rout of Mara is supposed to have taken place in the late evening.  The full moon[394] came out and in the three watches of the night he attained enlightenment.

The Pali and early Sanskrit texts place the most striking legendary scenes in the first part of the Buddha’s life just as scribes give freest rein to their artistic imagination in tracing the first letter and word of a chapter.  In the later version, the whole text is coloured and gilded with a splendour that exceeds the hues of ordinary life but no incidents of capital importance are added after the Enlightenment[395].  Historical names still occur and the Buddha is still a wandering teacher with a band of disciples, but his miracles continually convulse the universe:  he preaches to mankind from the sky and retires for three months to the Tusita Heaven in order to instruct his mother, who had died before she could hear the truth from her son’s lips, and often the whole scene passes into a vision where the ordinary limits of space, time and number cease to have any meaning.

CHAPTER IX

THE BUDDHA COMPARED WITH OTHER RELIGIOUS TEACHERS