1000 Buddhas of Genius. Victoria Charles

      The Life of Gautama, Down to the Time of his Appearance as a Teacher:

      Around 500 BCE, at a place called Kapilavastu on the banks of the river Rohini in what is now Nepal, there settled a tribe named the Sakyas. The river rose thirty or forty miles to the north of their settlement in the spurs of the mighty Himalayas, whose giant peaks loomed up in the distance against the clear blue of the Indian sky. The Sakyas had penetrated further to the east than most of their fellow tribes, but beyond them in that direction was the powerful confederation of the Licchavis and the rising kingdom of Magadha, while behind them to the west lay those lands which the Brahmans held most sacred. Their nearest neighbours to be feared were the subjects of the king of Sravasti, the rival of the king of Magadha. It was this rivalry more than their own strength that secured for the Sakyas a precarious independence; but their own hand was strong enough to protect them against the incursions of roving bands from the hills, and to sustain them in their quarrels with neighbouring clans of the same standing as themselves. They lived from the produce of their cattle and their rice-fields; their supplies of water being drawn from the Rohini, on the other side of which lived the Koliyans, a kindred tribe.

      The Sakyas sometimes quarrelled with the Koliyans for the possession of the water supply, but at this moment the two clans were at peace, and two daughters of the raja, or chief, of the Koliyans were the wives of Suddhodana, the raja of the Sakyas. The story tells us that both were childless, a misfortune great enough in other times and in other countries, but especially then and in that culture where it was firmly believed that the state of a man’s existence after death depended upon ceremonies to be performed by his heir. The rejoicing, therefore, was great when, at the age of 45, the elder sister promised Suddhodana a son. In accordance with custom, she started off with the intention of being confined to her parents’ house, but it was on the way under the shade of some lofty satin trees in a pleasant grove called Lumbini that her son, the future Buddha, was unexpectedly born. The mother and child were carried back to Suddhodana’s house; there, seven days afterwards, the mother died. The boy, however, found a careful nurse in his mother’s sister, his father’s other wife.