According to the Mahavansha, Gajasena was descended from Ixvâku, through the fabulous number of eighty-two thousand ancestors! He was also wont to call himself Shramana-Gautama, to mark his alliance with a certain priestly family of Brahmans and thereby disarm any animosity on their part toward his teaching. He was also called Shâkjasinha = "Lion of the tribe of Shâkja," to show that he belonged to the warrior caste.
He was brought up as heir to the crown, and was trained in the use of arms and in all matters appertaining to the duties of a ruler. At the age of sixteen he was married, and we have the names of his three wives—Utpalavarnâ, Jashodharâ, and Bhadrakâkkanâ. Up to the age of twenty-eight he lived a life entirely devoted to the pursuit of pleasure, his time being passed between the respective attractions of three splendid palaces built for him by his father. At about this age he appears to have grown weary of this desultory kind of life, and one day, meeting in his walks with an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and a priest, he was led to turn his thoughts upon the evils and the evanescence of life. Rambling on instead of returning home he sat down to rest under the shade of a gambu-tree, and here he found fresh food for his melancholy reflections in the miserable condition of the country people living around. The legend says the Devatâ, or gods, appeared to him in the shape of these suffering people in order further to instruct him in his new views of existence. In all probability his previous mode of life never having brought him in contact with the actual miseries of the needy this sight appeared to him in the light of an apparition.
The result of his deliberations was the resolve to withdraw to a place of solitude, where he might be free to consider by what means human beings could be relieved from their miseries[1].
With this view he forsook his family and his palatial residences, and having laid aside his rich clothing he wandered forth unknown to all, begging his food by the way till he found the retirement he sought in the hermitages of various Brahmans of Gajâshira, a hill in the neighbourhood of Gaja[2], whence he is sometimes called Gajashiras.
