Siddhārtha Gautama: What’s in a Name?

Jayarava Attwood 8 Apr 2013

Abstract

This article examines a critical problem regarding the historicity of the Buddha: his name. A survey of the Pāli texts does not reveal any instance of the Buddha being referred to by the name ‘Siddhārtha’. The high status Brahmin gotra name ‘Gautama’ is clearly out of place and at least one passage suggests an alternative gotra name. Further inconsistencies are found in the names of the Buddha’s mother, step-mother, son, and wife. These reinforce the perception that the Pāli texts are constructed rather than recorded history. This begs the question of whether the real identity of the Buddha is important to Buddhists. The traditional identity appears to have been invented, but was passed on and elaborated over centuries and therefore it was without question important in the history of Buddhism. However, the major currents in modernity are reshaping Buddhism away from traditional narratives. In modernist forms of Buddhism the importance of the historicity of the Buddha and faith in him are played down. The article ends by considering the importance of the historicity of the Buddha to modernist Buddhism, and the role of historical ‘facts’ in religion more generally.

Introduction

Buddhism is usually held to begin with a man known by the epithet buddha – “the one who has awoken or understood”. The Buddha is the traditional origin and focal point of Buddhism, and first of the three refuges of Buddhists. In the Pāli texts his followers mostly call him bhagavā or bhante; sometimes both. He often refers to himself as tathāgata. Other people tend to call him Gotama or samaṇa, with or without honorifics like bho or bhavaṃ. He is also known by a variety of other epithets: sugata, arahant, and so on.

The ancient received tradition is that the man we call “the Buddha” was born Siddhārtha Gautama, a member of the kṣatriya class and a prince of the Śākya tribe. This information is presented as historical fact in virtually every modern biography of the Buddha. Even where there are doubts about the historicity of these ‘facts’, the name Siddhārtha Gautama is often adopted de facto. However, as the discussion below shows there is no reason to believe that the Buddha was called Siddhārtha, and every reason to believe he was not called Gautama, was not a kṣatriya, and was not a prince. Only the association with the Śākya tribe is entirely plausible, but, as I tried to show in Attwood (2012), even the identity of the Śākya tribe and their role in the emergence of Buddhism may need revising. Since these are bold and perhaps unsettling claims, let us review the evidence of the early Buddhist texts in order to be sure of our ground before attempting to essay the consequences of them for Buddhism.

Siddhārtha

The name Siddhārtha is usually treated as a bahuvrīhi compound and taken to mean ‘one whose purpose is accomplished’. The Pāli form of the name, Siddhattha, only occurs in the Apadāna, the prose portions of the Jātakas, and other post-canonical works. It is not used in the Pāli Nikāyas or Vinaya as the name of the Buddha, although it is used for other people, including a past Buddha. The vocative form—siddhattha—only occurs outside the Canon, which means that no one is addressed as ‘Siddhattha’ in the Nikāyas or Vinaya. In the Apadāna ‘Siddhattha’ never occurs alongside the name Gautama, and may, in fact, be an adjective or epithet of the same type as tathāgata or arahant, rather than a proper name.

In the Sanskrit Mahāvastuan elaborate hagiography of the Buddha from the vinaya of the Lokottaravāda sectwe find him called both Siddhārtha (2.47, 2.75, 2.145 etc) and Sarvārthasiddha (3.176, 3.263 etc.). The same two forms are used in the Lalitavistara, another hagiography produced by the Sarvāstivāda sect (e.g. Vaidya 1958: 69), though this text seems to favour Sarvārthasiddha. The confusion of forms reinforces the perception that this is an epithet rather than a name. Indeed Max Müller doubted the name Siddhārtha was a given name (1860: 1), and Edward J. Thomas thought it most likely an epithet (1927: 44). It is notable that some histories drop any reference to the name Siddhārtha when discussing the Buddha, e.g. Romila Thapar’s history of India (2002) and Michael Carrithers’s introduction to the Buddha (2001). Earlier texts with biographical fragments, such as the Ariyapariyesanā Sutta (M. 26), make no mention of the Buddha’s given name at all. Of course one must always be cautious arguing from absence since there can be many reasons for leaving out information, not least of which is the familiarity of the intended audience with the information. And on this point we might cite a pericope that appears in the Mahākhandhaka and the Majjhima Nikāya: when the Buddha is reunited with the five ascetics after his awakening they address him “by name and as ‘friend’”. The Buddha tells them not to call by name because he is an arahant, a perfectly-awakened tathāgata. Was his name then expunged from the texts because it was inappropriate for monks to use it? And if so, why was it subsequently reinstated? Another possibility is that early Buddhists initially played down the personal name of the Buddha for the same reason that they did not use anthropomorphic images of the Buddha, whatever those reasons were. Once the name Siddhārtha begins to be used for the Buddha it seems to be the only name used, with the exception of the variation Sarvārthasiddha, and it is used in at least the Theravāda, Sarvāstivāda and Lokottaravāda sects. On the available evidence, there is no other strong contender apart from the name Siddhārtha for the Buddha (though see the discussion of Kosambi (1953) below). This brings us to the puzzle of the Buddha having a Brahmin clan name.

Gautama

The Buddha’s family name is universally understood to be Gautama (Pāli Gotama) and, unlike Siddhattha, this name is found throughout the Pāli Canon including in the earliest layers. Gautama is a Brahmin gotra (P. gotta) name. Gautama, Gotama and gotra all stem from the Sanskrit word go ‘cow’. The word gotra combines go with a suffix –tra indicating ‘protection’ and thus literally means a ‘cow protector’. Used figuratively, it evokes the image of a herd of cows enclosed and protected, which is metaphorically applied to the relationship of the clan group to the individual. In the name ‘Gotama’ the suffix –tama indicates the superlative degree of comparison, so that the name means ‘having the most cows’, or perhaps ‘the greatest cow’. For Brahmins, the gotra name indicates people claiming descent from a particular ancestor, especially one of the mythic authors of the Ṛgveda. One of the reasons that gotra is important is that Brahmins are not permitted to marry within their own gotra (a practice known as exogamy).

Gautama is one of the most distinctive traditional gotra names. A Gotama is mentioned in the Ṛgveda and he is considered to be one of the original seven ṛṣi or seers who composed the Veda. His descendents are called Gautama (with vṛddhi grade of the root vowel) meaning ‘related to Gotama’. The Gautamas are associated with the composition of the Sāmaveda. The inclusion of several Gautamas in the pre-Buddhist Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad lists of lineage holders (BU 2.6 & 4.6) is an indication that it continued to be a high status name in Brahmanical circles. In the post-Buddhist period another Gautama wrote one of several Dharmasūtras which sought to standardise the laws of Brahmanical society. All in all, the name Gautama is a thoroughly and unambiguously high status Brahmin name. With respect to the name Bhaddakaccā (one of the recorded names of the Buddha’s wife) the Dictionary of Pali Names says: “To suggest… that the name bears any reference to the Kaccānagotta seems to be wrong, because the Kaccāna [sic] was a Brahmin gotta and the Sākiyans were not Brahmins.” And this is precisely the problem with the Buddha being called Gautama in traditional narratives: he was not a Brahmin. It is mentioned many times throughout the Buddhist Canon that the Buddha was a kṣatriya – i.e. of the class associated with rulers and secular or military leadership.

It is notable that the Buddha implies, for example in the Vāseṭṭha Sutta (Sn iii.9), that he is a Brahmin. Admittedly this claim involves a radical redefinition of what a Brahmin is, and this claim did not stand the test of time in the way that the kṣatriya claim did. It shows a heterodox engagement with the Vedic ideas of class, which is very difficult to imagine this arising from within a Vedic milieu. Contrarily in the Sundarikabhāradvāja Sutta (Sn iii.4) the Buddha denies having any class. Asked “what is your caste” (kiṃ jacco bhavan ti) he replies “I am not a Brahmin, nor prince, nor merchant, or any other [class]” (Na brāhmaṇo nomhi na rājaputto, na vessāyano uda koci nomhi Sn 455). Thus the Pāli texts show the Buddha relinquishing his former identity, which may explain later confusion. However the confusion is not restricted to the Buddha’s name alone.

The Buddha’s father, Suddhodana, is called rāja in the Mahāpadāna Sutta (D ii.7, 52, 53). By the time the Apadāna was composed, in perhaps the 1st or 2nd centuries BCE, Suddhodana was referred to as mahārāja ‘great king’ (Ap 2.584); and in the Mahāvaṃsa Suddhodana is mahārāja and Siddhārtha is kumāra ‘prince’ (Mv. 21-24). However the Śākya nation seems to have been ruled by a gaṇasaṅgha, a kind of oligarchy made up of the heads of the various families in the tribe. Rāja cannot really mean king or royalty in this context (Thapar 2002: 146ff). The promotion to Mahārāja is in line with the gradual increase of prestige associated with the Buddha and his family in Buddhist hagiography over time. It has been suggested that perhaps the Śākyas employed a Brahmin purohita (as hierophant or advisor) and adopted his gotra name (Thomas 1927; Brough 1947; Kosambi 1967; Patil 1973). However, this practice is usually connected with a later period: “The Kshatriyas adopted gotras in imitation of the Brahmin gotras in post-epic times…” (Karve cited in Patil 1973: 42. My Italics.). The rules for adoption of a purohita’s gotra are described in the Dharmasūtras (Brough 1947: 84) which are thought to have been composed post-Aśoka as part of an attempt to standardise diverse local customs, at least partly a response to the success of Buddhism (C.f. Olivelle 2006: 177).

The implication that the Buddha’s father Suddhodana might have employed a Brahmin ritual master has several weaknesses. Firstly we never meet this purohita and there is no mention of any Brahmins in relation to the Buddha’s family in the earlier biographical accounts such as the Ariyapariyesanā Sutta. In the Nālaka Sutta of the Suttanipāta (Sn 679ff) we meet Asita, a ṛṣi with matted hair (jaṭī), possibly a Brahmin ascetic, who predicts the future of the young Gautama. However this story is already elaborated into a hagiography using legendary motifs such as the purity of the Bodhisatta’s mother; birth from her side rather than her vagina (thus having no contact with the polluting body fluids of normal birth) ; and taking seven steps, speaking immediately after birth and so on. Secondly, as discussed above, Suddhodana is a tribal rāja or ‘chief’ or ‘head man’ taking part in an oligarchy, not a king with a court and ministers. Thirdly the Buddha of the Pāli Canon never has a good word to say about Brahmin ritualists, and often has bad words to say about them (see e.g. Black 2009). Indeed the Buddha’s attitude to class (varṇa) or caste (jāti) is sometimes taken as evidence that the Śākyas found these ideas novel or peculiar. Lastly there is no obvious suggestion in the Pāli texts of anyone else adopting a Brahman name.

Brough raises some doubts about the idea that kṣatriyas and vaiśyas did not have gotra names as claimed in some Brahmanical texts. He makes the point that varṇa in the Ṛgveda was probably less rigid and “…in a real sense kṣatriyas and commoners could be considered as members of the same clans as the Brahmans” (Brough 1947: 84). This opens the possibility that some non-Brahmins might have had ancestral gotra names, though this could only apply to those non-Brahmins who were originally part of the Vedic milieu. In Attwood (2012) I took up Michael Witzel’s informal argument that the Śākya tribe were immigrants from Iran who entered India sometime after the composition of the Ṛgveda. Sometime in the mid-ninth century BCE, probably as a result of climate change, they migrated into the area that they occupy in the Pāli texts. The argument was and is speculative, but it is reasonably clear that the Śākyas were not part of the Vedic speaking culture which gave rise to the varṇa system and thus probably stood outside Brahmanical social structures. This would help to explain the often hostile attitude of the Buddha towards Brahmins portrayed in the Pāli suttas.

There is one last point to make on the name Gautama. If Gotama was a Prakrit name, then the idea that in Sanskrit the name must be Gautama (with vṛddhi of the root vowel) could be incorrect. Indeed Sanskrit Gotama, despite its strong Vedic resonances, might be a name for anyone in a cow herding culture. Despite references to the Śākyas ploughing fields, suggesting they were not herders, they may also have kept cattle. This would make Gautama a hyper-Sanskritisation: like sūtra for sutta (where sūkta was most likely intended) and sattva for satta (instead of śakta). All things considered, it seems more than a little incongruous for the Buddha to have a high status Brahmin gotra name, but despite this there have been few attempts to explain it.

Gautama as Personal Name?

One of the very few attempts to explain the name Gautama is by D.D. Kosambi (1953). Kosambi offered a novel approach to the problem of the Buddha having a Brahmin gotra name. He pointed to two brief Pāli passages which suggest that Gautama was not the Buddha’s gotra name. The first is from the Therīgāthā verses of the Buddha’s maternal aunt and foster mother, Mahā-Pajāpati. She says (Thig, 162):

Bahūnaṃ vata atthāya, māyā janayi gotamaṃ; Truly for the many, Māyā gave birth to Gotama

Kosambi’s point here is that the names Māyā and Gotama are on the same level – i.e. they are both personal names rather than family or clan names. In support of this, Kosambi points out that the Buddha’s wife is not known as Gotamī in any tradition, and notes that Buddhist bhikkhus are called sakiyaputta rather than gotamaputta. This raises an interesting point, viz. that the Buddha’s father is not called Gotama in any tradition either. Similarly neither the Buddha’s male cousins Ānanda and Devadatta, nor his son Rāhula, are ever referred to as Gotama or even Gotamaputta. The word gotamaputta seems not to appear in the extended Pāli literature, though gotamiputta does, as I will discuss below. A one-off passage in the Saṃyutta Nikāya refers to a group of monks attending the Buddha while he stays in Kapilavatthu as ‘Gotamas’ plural (S iv.183 abhikkantā kho gotamā ratti). The suggestion here is that these Gotamas are his kin, but this appears to be the only time the plural is used in the Pāli Nikāyas or Vinaya. Usually his kin are referred to a Śākyas. When the Buddha is in Kapilavastu, the introduction of suttas say sakkesu viharati ‘dwelling amongst the Śākyas’ (e.g. D ii.253, D iii.116, M i.90, etc). Gautama does not appear in the plural in the Lalitavistara or the Mahāvastu.

Kosambi argues that the fact that Mahā-Pajāpati, his mother’s sister, is called Gotamī, suggests that Gotama is not the Buddha’s clan-name, since the names pass down patrilineal lines. Kosambi appears to be thinking in terms of Brahminical marriage rules. These are not known to have applied to outside of Brahmanical society in the Buddha’s time, and it is unlikely that the Śākyas would have followed Vedic social patterns (Attwood 2012, Witzel 1997). John Brough points out that even if the kṣatriyas did take the gotra of their purohita it would have been absurd to use this instead of one’s family connections as a guide to suitability for marriage (Brough 1947: 84). More to the point, I will show below that it is not unknown for men, even Brahmins, to be known by matrilineal names or metronyms. Thus the Buddha might have inherited the name Gautama from his mother’s side.

There is also some confusion surrounding the name of the Buddha’s mother. She is usually known as Māyā, or Māyādevī, though she is also called Gotamī. This is puzzling on the face of it because the word māyā means ‘delusion’ or ‘magical illusion’ in Pāli. According to Oskar von Hinüber the original name might have been Mātā (mother) and the -t- became a -y- because of a dialectical change (Hinüber 1991: 187). K. R. Norman examined some similar changes in Pāli and concluded that though rare such dialectical changes are not unknown. Hinüber’s conjecture is therefore at least plausible, despite the confusion with māyā (2006: 84). This would seem to undermine Kosambi’s argument that Māyā is a personal name. There is another possibility with regard to the name Māyā. William K. Mahoney notes that the word has shifted its meaning, and earlier referred to mysterious creative powers of the gods:

“The gods’ māyā was associated particularly with the events and seeming marvels of nature, such as the appearance of the sun’s bright forms at dawn from what had previously been a deep and pervading darkness or the formation of thunderclouds in an otherwise empty sky.” (Mahoney 1998: 6).

Thus we could read Māyā as ‘Creatrix’: a feminine representative of the archetypal creative principle. This is a description of an archetypal role rather than a personal name, but it is consistent with her role as mother of the Buddha. It is worth noting that the lineage of the sisters Māyā and Prajāpatī is confused. In Pāli they are daughters of Añjana of Devadaha, a Śākya. However, in the Lalitavistara their father is called Suprabuddha, who is also a Śākya. In the Mahāvastu he is called Subhūti the Śākya of Devadaha, his wife is Koliyan, and he married a total of seven sisters. In Tibetan versions of the story the two sisters are called Māyā and Mahāmāyā (Thomas 1927: 25).

In the case of Devadatta, Matsunami Yoshihiro notes: “But most of the Vinaya text accounts of the evil done by Devadatta use the name ‘Devadatta’ not as a reference to an actual person but as a symbol for whatever threatens the existence or harmony of the samgha.” (Matsunami 1979: 337-8). In fact Devadatta is the Sanskrit literary equivalent of ‘John Smith’ and might be playing the same role here in Pāli. In a similar vein we find many Vinaya rules are instituted because of the behaviour of the notorious “Group of Six Bhikkhus” (chabbaggiyā bhikkhū e.g. Vin v.108). There might have been an historical Buddhist called Devadatta as well, but we don’t really know. André Bareau casts doubt on whether Devadatta was in fact Śākya or related to the Buddha (cited in Ray 1994: 177, n. 44). Kosambi’s other text is the Pabbajjā Sutta (Sn 405-24) in which King Bimbisāra asks the Buddha where he is from. The Buddha replies that he comes from the country of Kosala, and:

Ādiccā nāma gottena, sākiyā nāma jātiyā; Tamhā kulā pabbajitomhi, na kāme abhipatthayaṃ.

Called Ādiccā by gotra, called Sākiya by birth. I went forth from that family, not longing for pleasures.

The suggestion is that the Buddha’s name was Gautama Ādityā (P. Gotama Ādiccā). The phrase “Ādiccā nāma gottena” only occurs once in the canon, but elsewhere the Buddha says that the Śākyas consider Rājā Okkāka of the Ādiccā gotta (Skt. Ādityā gotra) as their ancestor (Ambaṭṭha Sutta. D i.92-3). The name Okkāka has been linked to King Ikṣvāku of Kausala, though Attwood (2012) raises doubts about the identification. Ikṣvāku seems more like a substitution than a translation of Okkāka (the two names don’t seem to share an etymology). Salomon and Baum (2007) have made a case that the two names, along with the Gāndhārī name Iṣmaho, are all in fact related. They argue that such wide phonetic differences in names are common between Sanskrit and Pāli. There is a caveat however. The authors point out that in at least three cases Indian dynasties have identified themselves as descendents of Ikṣvāku in order to claim an association with the Buddha, and “… even the claim of the Śākyas themselves to Ikṣvāku descent has, to say the least, a legendary air about it.” (2007: 217). This connection of the Buddha with Ādityā and Ikṣvāku may be related to the annexation of the Śākyan territory by Kausala during the Buddha’s lifetime. This casts doubt on any account that portrays the Buddha as Kausalan.

The Buddha is also sometimes called Aṅgīrasa, another Brahmin gotra name. Brough shows that Gautama is subsumed under the name Aṅgīrasa in the Dharmasūtra lists of gotra names (Brough 1946: 35). The name Aṅgīrasa appears in a list of Vedic Sages (e.g. D i.104, M ii.169). However my reading of the texts is that aṅgirasa is being used as an adjective rather than a name in Pāli. For example in the Pañcarāja Sutta we find the verse praising the Buddha:

As the lotus, the fragrant red lotus, Opening in the morning, never losing its scent. Witness the one with radiant limbs shining, Like the sun burning in the sky.

Buddhaghosa says that the Buddha is called aṅgīrasa (meaning ‘one with radiant limbs’) “because rays of light (rasmi) issue from his limbs (aṅga)” not because of clan affiliations. Similarly at D iii.195 and S i.196. Against the passage from the Pabbajjā Sutta, Kosambi also cites the Mahāpadāna Sutta (D ii.3):

Ahaṃ, bhikkhave, etarahi arahaṃ sammāsambuddho gotamo gottena ahosiṃ. I, bhikkhus, now worthy, fully awakened, was of the Gotama gotra.

This phrase occurs three times in the Mahāpadāna Sutta. Kosambi refers to this as “the first interpretation of Gotama as the Buddha’s gotra name... obviously a late formation under Brahmin influence”. However there is simply no basis for this claim; on the contrary, the name Gotama appears throughout the Canon, including the older parts of the Sutta Nipāta, e.g. the Pārāyanavagga. Kosambi is at least attuned to the need to explain the Buddha’s Brahmin name and his argument is ingenious, but unfortunately it does not stand up to scrutiny.

In this section, in addition to raising the question of the historicity of the name ‘Siddhartha Gautama’ we noted in passing that the name of the Buddha’s mother was similarly problematic, as was the identity of the important figure of Devadatta. In the next section we will digress briefly to consider the names of the Buddha’s son and his wife.

Rāhula & Rāhulamātā

The Buddha’s son is not mentioned in the simpler, and therefore probably earlier, Pāli biographical fragments, such as that found the Ariyapariyesanā Sutta. In the more elaborate versions his son is called Rāhula which, following Theravāda convention, is most often understood to mean ‘fetter’. According to commentarial tradition, on hearing that he has a son the Bodhisatta says: rāhu jāto, bandhanaṃ jātaṃ (JA i.60 = ThagA 2.125 = ApA 65 = BvA 280). The implication here is that rāhu is glossed by bandhana ‘a binding’. In the Sutta-nipāta rāhu is paired with canda (desire) and with gahaṇa (grasping) as qualities the Buddha is freed from, telling us that it has the same kind of negative connotations (candova rāhuggahaṇā pamuttā Sn 469). Hence the translation of rāhu as ‘fetter’. This hardly seems a compassionate name for a child and jars with the overall sense we have of the Buddha as a wise and kind person, even before his awakening. Given the late date of the explanation (ca. 5th century CE) it could be that it reflects settled monastic views on children – they bind one to the household life. Of course Rāhula did not bind Gautama to home, so he was not really a fetter in that sense at all. Another explanation occurs in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya. In this text Rāhula is conceived on the night the Bodhisattva leaves home to pursue his quest, gestates for 6 years, and is born on the eve of his awakening. “He is called Rāhula because, at that very moment, the moon was being eclipsed by Rāhu.” (Strong 1997: 119; 2001: 58). Grammatically Rāhula can be construed as a diminutive from Rāhu. The Pāli texts recall an asura called Rāhu. Rāhu is often referred to as a Lord of the Asuras (asurindo), and at A ii.17 he is foremost (aggaṃ) of those having a body (attabhāvīnaṃ). In the Chandimā Sutta (SN 1.9; S i.50) Rāhu has captured (rāhuna) the deva Candimā (i.e. the moon), and in the Suriya Sutta (SN 1.10; S i.51) Rāhu seizes (rāhuna) the deva Suriya (i.e. the sun). From this we could deduce that the name is emblematic of his action: he is ‘the one who seizes or captures’. In fact these episodes describe lunar and solar eclipses in mythic terms. If Rāhula was born during an auspicious event such as an eclipse it would also explain the epithet Rāhulabhadda ‘Lucky Rāhula’. A similar story can be traced to Franz Anton von Shciefner (1845), who based his version on an unnamed Tibetan composition dated 1734 (Thomas 1927: p. xv & xxi; 53 n.1). As Thomas puts it:

“… the name Rāhula… does not mean a bond. It is a diminutive of Rāhu, the monster who swallows the sun or moon during an eclipse, and it would be the natural name for a person born at such a time.”

The name Rāhula appears in Tibetan legends where it does indeed appear to mean ‘eclipse’ but does not refer to the son of the Buddha: “Rahula is a wrathful protector of the Nyingma Treasure Tradition who seizes the sun and the moon, and eclipses planets. Also known as the eclipse maker, Rahula is green in colour with nine heads, two hands and the lower body that of a serpent and upper body that of humanoid.” (Dorji 2005). This Rāhula would appear to be related to the asura Rāhu.

J. C. Wright notes that Aśvaghoṣa also associates Rāhula with the moon in his Buddhacarita (2.46), describing him as rāhu-sapatna-vaktraḥ ‘having the face of Rāhu’s enemy’, i.e. like the moon. However Wright rejects the notion that Aśvaghoṣa was deriving the name Rāhula from Rāhu, arguing instead that he was making a play on words—“devising a fresh simile”—rather than proposing an etymology (1999: 526 and ibid n.12). The interpretation of Rāhula as ‘eclipse’ in the sense of ‘auspicious sign’ would be more satisfying as a name for a child. And though the Pāli/Theravāda tradition appears not to know this tradition, we can say that the Pāli word rāhu only ever seems to occur in relation to the asura Rāhu (except for the single case at Sn 469 mentioned above). At the least we can say that the name seems to demand an explanation when it is used, which does suggest that the meaning was not immediately apparent, even to a Buddhist audience.

The name of Rāhula’s mother, the Buddha’s wife, is also confused, but this is dealt with reasonably well in the Dictionary of Pāli Names so I won’t elaborate except to say that again the standard name, Yasodhara, is late and there are contradictory candidates including: Rahūlamātā, Bhaddakaccā, Bhaddakaccāna, Bimbādevī, Bimbāsundarī. DOPN makes sense of the plethora by arguing:

“It is probable that the name of Gotama’s wife was Bimbā, and that Bhaddakaccā, Subhaddakā, Yosadhāri and the others, were descriptive epithets applied to her, which later became regarded as, additional names.”

To this list we can add the name Gopā from the Lalitavistara. This shows that we see the same confusion and ambiguity regarding the names of the wife and child of the Buddha as surrounds the Buddha’s name and those of his mother and step-mother. Before returning to consider the implications of this for Buddhism, I want to explore a novel proposal regarding his name.

Son of Gautama?

Though the Buddha meets Brahmins from many other gotra lineages, it does not appear that he ever meets a Brahmin from the Gautama gotra in the Pāli suttas. The individual Gautamas he has contact with are his mother, his aunt, and Kisā Gotamī. There are also three lots of verses in the Theragāthā attributed to “Gotama” that are obviously not the Buddha, though their stories give no clues as to their varṇa (Thag 137-38, 258-60, 587-96). At Thag 119 Vajjiputta appears to address a Gotama who is not the Buddha or perhaps he is recalling words directed to himself and he was a Gotama. These Gautamas seem not to have left traces elsewhere in the Pāli literature.

As mentioned above, a single passage in the Pāli refers to a group of monks in Kapilavatthu as “Gotamas” (S iv.183) but because they are kinsmen rather than Brahmins. This is odd. The two ancestors Gotama and Bhāradvāja are mentioned together in Bṛhadāranyaka Upaniṣad 2.2.4, and Gautama the Buddha meets more than a dozen Brahmins from the Bhāradvāja gotra, who mostly seem to live in Kausala (see e.g. D 3, 13, 27, 32, and throughout the nikāyas). Thus we could reasonably expect to meet Brahmins from the Gautama gotra in Kausala also, but we don’t.

We know that both the Buddha’s mother and her sister were referred to as Gautamī. We’ve also noted Buddha’s male family membersfather, son, and male cousinsare never referred to as Gautama; nor are the family collectively referred to as ‘the Gotamas’ and, except for an isolated reference to a group of monks, nor is any other group. When the Buddha is visiting Kapilavatthu he mentions “dwelling amongst the Śākyans” (sakkesu viharati: Vin. i.82; M i.108, iii.109 etc). We usually assume that the sisters took the name of their husband, but in order to explain the given evidence we might instead assume that the two sisters were named Gautamī because they were from the Gautama clan, and that they retained their gotra name and bequeathed it to the Buddha. One of the main objections to this proposal is the idea that men did not use their mother’s names. However several men do have matrilineal names (or metronymics) in the Pāli Canon, e.g.

Kāḷigodhāyaputta, son of Kāḷigohdā (S v.396); Kumāputta (= Nanda), son of Kumā (Thag 36, ThagA i.100) Māluṅkyāputta, son of Māluṅkyā (Thag 399, 404), Vedehiputta, (= Rāja Ajātasattu) Son of Vedehi (D i.46ff., S i.82) Sañjikāputta, son of Sañjikā; (M ii.91) Sāriputta, son of Rūpasārī (SnA i.326).

Note that Sāriputta is said to have been a Brahmin. Patañjali also refers to Pāṇini as Dākṣīputra after his mother who was from the Dakṣa gotra (Patil 1973: 44), and in the early Common Era there was a Sātavāhana king named Gautamīputra (Lamotte 1988: 455). Thomas Trautmann (1972) discusses metronymics in the context of the Guptas, and concludes that they were used alongside patronymics in order to reinforce claims to power that derive from the mother’s lineage. It may be that the Buddhist Gautama was originally Gautamīputra, the son of Gautamī and the name was masculinised. The Pāli name Gotamiputta does occur in the Khaṇḍahāla Jātaka (PTS J 542 ). In this story the character being played by the Buddha is three times referred to as Gotamiputta (CST verses 1109, 1117, & 1121). But who is being addressed here? The Bodhisatta or the character from his past life?

Earlier we established that it is implausible for a Śākya to adopt a Brahmin name for reasons of prestige. It is also implausible that they used the name to indicate membership of a Vedic gotra. Against this implausible scenario we can speculate, with some minimal supporting evidence, that the Śākyas might have sought to side with Brahmins against the imperialists in Kausala and Māgadha and sealed an alliance with an exchange of daughters (Māyā and Prajāpatī) in marriage. Both of the women’s names have Vedic overtones and could be said to present the creator god and his creative power in Vedic myth. Is the idea of a marginal tribal chief marrying two high status Brahmin girls, perhaps to cement an alliance, plausible? King Pasenadi was also cultivating alliances with Brahmins in his kingdom, as we see from stories of several grants of land to them (D i.86, D i.223, D ii.315; M ii.164). The Pāli commentaries tell us that Pasenadi of Kausala married a daughter of Bimbisāra of Māgadha and that Ajātasattu, Bimbisāra’s son and Pasenadi’s nephew married a daughter of Pasenadi and Mallikā. They also relate the story that Pasenadi requested a daughter of the Śākyas in marriage to cement his relationship with the Buddha (DOPN sv. Pasenadi), though he was duped into marrying the daughter of a Śākya and a slave. When his son, Viḍūḍabha, having usurped the throne, discovered the truth, he laid waste to the Śākyas. At least in the commentarial tradition the marriage of daughters to cement alliances seems to have been common.

If Trautmann (1972) is correct then the continued use of the name Gautama would have been an acknowledgement of a significant level of influence deriving from it. And if the Śākyas did attempt a military alliance with Brahmins against Kausala or some other power, then Brahmins would have seen the leaders of the Śākyas as kṣatriyas by their own definition, and this might have stuck. The other main objection to this idea is that Pāli sources tell us the sisters were from Śākya (or possibly Koliyā) . If this is true then they cannot have been Brahmins for the same reason that the Buddha was not a Brahmin. But since the accounts of people and places are all confused we simply don’t know. If the sisters were Brahmin it would at least explain their names. It will be worth pausing to summarise the evidence, as distinct from the speculation, before continuing on to explore the implications for present day Buddhists and attempting to answer the questions posed in the introduction.

Summary

All Buddhists acknowledge an historical founder figure, though he is often addressed in impersonal epithets such as bhagavat, arhat, tathāgata, sugata, mahāśrāmaṇa etc. There seems to be a broad, but not unanimous, consensus that the Buddha is an historical person. Most agree that that he was not a prince, but the son of a member of the gaṇasangha or ruling council of the Śākyas. The Śākyas were a marginal tribe probably not originally part of the Vedic-speaking milieu and having some curious cultural parallels with Iran and Zoroastrianism. Time seems to have continually inflated the Buddha’s social standing. Speculations aside, we’re left with the impression of a confused and ambiguous situation regarding the name of the Buddha and his immediate family members. Since the name Siddhattha is not used in the Pāli texts we have no certainty that the Buddha’s personal name was Siddhārtha, or that siddhārtha was more than another epithet of the same type as bhagavat or tathāgata. The Buddha apparently did not want to be addressed by name in any case. We have no convincing explanation for the extremely unlikely fact of the Buddha having a Brahmin gotra name of considerable prestige across the spectrum of early Buddhist literature. D. D. Kosambi’s attempt to solve the problem by making Gautama his first name was ingenious, but did not quite work. Curiously, if Gautama is a gotra name the Buddha’s father and other male relatives never use it. Nor is his extended family referred to collectively as ‘the Gautamas’. The fact that at least one text claims his gotra is Ādiccā only muddies the water further. Some men did use metronymics.

What’s in a Name?

Reginald Ray has shown how the Buddha’s biography becomes a template for the archetypal Buddhist ‘saint’ as he (almost always ‘he’) appears throughout Buddhist history (Ray 1994). It seems to me that the Buddha’s biography itself has been moulded to fit a template as well. Missing biographical details such as names have been supplied in such a way as to reinforce the story where possible – so that the one who achieved what he set out to achieve is conveniently called ‘Achieves his Goals’ at birth. Names such as Śāriputra are rather prosaic by comparison. Since so many of the names are confused or ambiguous it must leave us wondering about the extent of the process. Was there a founder at all? Early scholars Senart and Kern were both of the opinion that the Buddha was a purely legendary figure, but Telwatte Rahula argues that the basic historicity has been “proved” even while noting that acceptance of this proof is not universally accepted (Rahula 1978: 182). Whatever the historicity of the Buddha as a person, clearly the names we use for the Buddha and his family are of doubtful historicity.

Given the prominence and importance of the Buddha’s biography in received traditions of Buddhism, it would seem to be a problem for his identity to be an invention. Indeed in traditionally Theravāda Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka or Burma one imagines the idea of the Buddha as a fictional character would be an unwelcome proposition, even if this character was completely consistent with Buddhist belief. And how could he be otherwise? For many Buddhists the historical Buddha is replaced by mythic figures such as Amitābha or Avalokiteśvara as the focus of their faith. For Mahāyāna Buddhists generally speaking the historical Buddha is of secondary interest compared with these archetypal buddhas and bodhisattvas. Indeed the traditional Buddha himself takes on a more archetypal aspect and becomes Śākyamuni, the form manifestation (nirmāṇakāya) of the abstract principle of awakening. In this guise he provided an essential service in re-stating the eternal Dharma in our aeon, but it is his manifestation of a transcendental principle, rather than his personal charisma which is important.

Mark Woodward has argued that this theme is already evident in the early Buddhist idea of the previous Buddhas, and that Buddhist cosmology is specifically constructed to deny the importance of the historicity of the Buddha (1997: 50). We’ve already noted that the Buddha rebukes those who address him by name which seems to downplay his personality. Similarly Michel Clasquin-Johnson (2013) has observed that early Buddhist routinization of the charisma of the founder, as seen through the lens of the Pāli texts, appears to follow Max Weber’s ideal to a rare degree. The founder is not replaced by a disciple and indeed the suggestion of his replacement is resisted. Instead, even before the founder dies, his charisma becomes encoded in a set of rules, the Vinaya, and in the collective of the bhikkhu-saṃgha. Though Clasquin-Johnson also observes that this situation did not last and that charismatic figures (in the Weberian sense) are prominent in modern Buddhism. Indeed many Buddhists feel that a living Buddhist master is their direct link to fountainhead of Buddhism; though the charisma of the Buddhist master derives at least partly from the continuity of the lineage that connects him (or rarely her) to the Buddha or one of the Buddhist archetypes. The phrase ‘living Buddha’ is not unusually applied to revered teachers.

In what is being called “Western Buddhism” the relationship to traditional narratives is altered by the sometimes contradictory narratives of modernity, especially Romanticism, Protestantism, and Scientific Rationalism (McMahan 2008). The first emphasises personal experience, especially numinous or mystical experience as authoritative; the second privileges texts as the source of authority, and again emphasises the importance of personal effort; while the latter stresses empiricism and the ‘laws of nature’, and denies the supernatural. All of these narratives deprecate ‘priestly’ intermediaries between us and the Buddha, but also downplay the role of a long-dead founder in contemporary Buddhist life. The emphasis is on our own subjective experience of the practices, our own reading of the texts (albeit in translation) and our own objective observations of the effects of Buddhist practice. These come before faith in the historical Buddha as founder, let alone as refuge or guide. The traditional Buddha is diminished from a living presence to a symbol of human potential. Recent years have also seen the emergence of so-called Secular Buddhism which, to the extent that it represents a shared vision at all, emphasises rationalism and rejection of tradition. In this milieu the Buddha is a figure without any supernatural overtones. He is a human being, just like figures of the European Enlightenment – someone who discovered principles which anyone can understand and apply. Thus Secular Buddhists share many of the assumptions of early Western scholars of Buddhism such as T.W. and C.A.F Rhys Davids.

For many modern Buddhists what matters is, not so much the Buddha and his name, as the practices which were left to us in his name. In my own informal writing I have argued, for example, that I am a Buddhist because of what I do and who I do it with, rather because of what (or in whom) I believe and why I believe. Although the thrust of modernism has been towards disenchantment and demystification, there is no denying that human beings like to be able to relate to ideas through people, or personifications. Fictional characters such as Odysseus, Hamlet, Sherlock Holmes, or Bilbo Baggins, are no less moving, entertaining, instructional and, in some cases, profound for being utterly fictitious. Truths can be conveyed in narratives precisely because they do not just present the facts but allow us to come into relationship with facts and assess the value and importance of them in our lives.

Abstract facts, on the whole, do not move us. The role of emotions in decision-making is a theme which has been explored by Antonio Damasio. One of his conclusions in Descartes’ Error (1994) is that we experience the value of facts, i.e. how important they are to us, somatically through emotions. He shows that when certain centres of the brain associated with emotions are damaged, people struggle to assign value to facts in order to assess the relative importance of them. This in turn disrupts their ability to make decisions, since all facts appear to them to have equal weight. Facts have a truth value, but they also have salience, experienced as feelings about facts, which represents how important they are to us in making decisions. Hence we can ‘trust our gut’ or our (non-rational) ‘intuition’ when making decisions. Indeed all reasoning—i.e. all weighing of facts—is partially emotional; all thinking is partially somatic. This observation is consistent with Buddhist models of cognition which do not split thought and emotion into two distinct categories but unite them under the heading of citta.

One of the characteristics of religious conviction is that it changes the salience of facts for the believer. A fact may be true but judged unimportant; or trumped by another true fact of wider significance and salience. This may be why widely accepted facts with a strong evidential basis, such as the evolution of species or the age of the universe as 13.7 billion years, do not always convince religieux. Equally an idea which is factually untrue may have considerable salience, since if one sincerely believes in the idea it changes one’s behaviour. This distinction between truth and salience is seldom made in discussions about religious belief, but it would help us to understand the dynamics of religious belief if it were.

If the Buddha is only a character in a narrative this need not mean that he is therefore impotent or irrelevant to Buddhists or to scholars of Buddhism. Even if one could prove beyond doubt that the Buddha was never an historical figure (though I don’t think this could be done) the Buddha as a personification of certain values would continue to have salience for Buddhists; and the study of Buddhism ought to include the study of what is salient to Buddhists. The stories of the Buddha communicate salient information to Buddhists; and themselves shape the way that Buddhists decide what is salient to them. Traditional biographies of the Buddha continue to be a source of inspiration and fascination for Buddhists. New biographies are regularly published and elaborated on in new ways under the influence of contemporary culture. However the purpose of biographies of the Buddha has never been to provide an accurate historical record. Religious biographies, or hagiographies, are written to inspire, but also to help educate the religieux in what their religion considers salient. For the scholar they provide not historical facts, but information on what is most salient in that religion and how believers weigh the salience of facts.

I hope that this article has demonstrated that we do not in fact know the name of the historical founder of Buddhism; that the name Siddhārtha Gautama is an invention, which suggests that Siddhārtha Gautama is a fictional character, though he may be based on a real person. I also hope that this should not be taken to mean that Buddhists are foolish to find Siddhārtha Gautama an inspiring and salient figure, or even to believe him to be the founder of Buddhism. If nothing else it ought to be acknowledged as a great story.

Abbreviations

BU Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad CST Chaṭṭha Sangāya Tripiṭaka (Vipassana Research Institute. Version 4.0) D Dīgha Nikāya DhpA Dhammapada Aṭṭhakāthā DOPN Dictionary of Pali Names J Jātaka M Majjhima Nikāya Mv Mahāvastu P Pāli S Saṃyutta Nikāya SA Saṃyutta Nikāya Aṭṭhakāthā SnA Suttanipatta Aṭṭhakāthā Thag Theragāthā ThagA Theragāthā Aṭṭhakāthā Thig Therīgāthā

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