Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/343

Rh kindred clans, the Sakyas and the Koliyans, lived on the opposite banks of the small stream Rohini, and enjoyed a sort of precarious independence, more through the jealousies of the rival kings of Magadha and Kosala than by their own power. Kapilavastu was the capital of the Sakyas, who were then living in peace with the Koliyans, and Suddhodana, chief of the Sakyas, had married two daughters of the chief of the Koliyans.

Neither queen bore a child to Suddhodana for many years, and the hope of leaving an heir to the principality of the Sakyas was well-nigh abandoned. At last, however, the elder queen promised her husband an heir, and, according to ancient custom, left for her father's house, that her child might be born there. On her way, however, she gave birth to a son in the pleasant grove of Lumbini. The mother and the child were carried back to Kapilavastu, where the former died seven days after, leaving the child to be nursed by his stepmother and aunt, the younger queen.

The boy was named Siddhartha, but Gautama was his family name. He belonged to the Sakya tribe, and is therefore often called Sakyasimha, "Lion of the Sakyas;" and when he had proclaimed his new faith, he was called Buddha, or the "Awakened" or "Enlightened."

Little is known of the early life of Gautama, except that he married his cousin Subhadhra, or Yasodhara, daughter of the chief of Koli, when he was about eighteen years of age. Ten years later, however, he