and whether this is a correct statement or not, it is certain that he was credited with superhuman power and received a homage which seemed even to Indians excessive[739].  It is in the light of such incidents and such temperaments that we should read the story of the Buddha.  Could we be transported to India in the days of his preaching, we should probably see a figure very like the portrait given in the more sober parts of the Pitakas, a teacher of great intelligence and personal charm, yet distinctly human.  But had we talked about him in the villages which lay along his route, or even in the circle of his disciples, I think we should have heard tales of how Devas visited him and how he was wont to vanish and betake himself to some heaven.  The Hindu attributes such feats to a religious leader, as naturally as Europeans would ascribe to him a magnetic personality and a flashing eye.

The Pitakas emphasize the omniscience and sinlessness of the Buddha but contain no trace of the idea that he is God in the Christian or Mahommedan sense.  They are consistently non-theistic and it is only later that Buddhas and Bodhisattvas become transformed into beings about whom theistic language can be used.  But in those parts of the Pitakas which may be reasonably supposed to contain the ideas of the first century after the Buddha’s death, he is constantly represented as instructing Devas and receiving their homage[740].  In the Khuddaka-patha the spirits are invited to come and do him reverence.  He is described as the Chief of the World with all its gods[741], and is made to deny that he is a man.  If a Buddha cannot be called a Deva rather than a man, it is only because he is higher than both.  It is this train of thought which leads later Buddhists[742] to call him Devatideva, or the Deva who is above all other Devas, and thus make him ultimately a being comparable with Siva or Vishnu.

The idea that great teachers of mankind appear in a regular series and at stated intervals is certainly older than Gotama, but it is hard to say how far it was systematized before his time.  The greatness of the position which he won and the importance of the institutions which he founded naturally caused his disciples to formulate the vague traditions about his predecessors.  They were called indifferently Buddha, Jina, Arhat, etc., and it was only after the constitution of the Buddhist church that these titles received fixed meanings.

Closely connected with the idea of the Buddha or Jina is that of the Mahapurusha or great man.  It was supposed that there are born from time to time supermen distinguished by physical marks who become either universal monarchs (cakra-vartin) or teachers of the truth.  Such a prediction is said to have been made respecting the infant Gotama and all previous Buddhas.  The marks are duly catalogued, as thirty-two greater and eighty[743] smaller signs.  Many of them are very curious.  The hair is glossy black: