He first placed himself under the teaching of the Brahman Arâda Kâlâma, afterwards under that of another called Rudraka, who was so struck with the progress he made in the acquisition of every kind of knowledge that he soon associated him with himself in the direction of his disciples. Five of these (four of them belonging to the royal Shâkja family), Âgnâta, Ashvagit, Bhadraka, Vashpa, and Mahârâta, grew so much attached to him and his views that they subsequently became the first followers of his separate school of teaching.
Having after some years exhausted the satisfaction he found in the pursuit of study he set out restlessly on a new search after happiness, followed by the five disciples I have named, and retired with them to a more exclusive solitude still, where for six years he gave himself up to unbroken contemplation amid the most rigid austerities. After this he seems to have somewhat alienated his companions by relaxing his severe mode of life, for they forsook him about this time and took up their abode in the neighbourhood of Vârânasî[1], where they continued to live as he had shown them at the first[2].
This mode of life even he, however, does not appear to have altered except in the matter of abridging his fasts, for his habitual meditations went on as before, and they were believed to have so illumined his understanding that he finally received the appellation of Buddha = "the enlightened one," while from his favourite habit of making these meditations under the shade of the ashvattha, the "trembling leaf" fig-tree, that tree, which has acquired so prominent a place in Buddhist records, legends, and institutions, came to be called the bodhiruma, literally, "tree of knowledge," and it has even been distinguished by naturalists from the ficus indica, of which it is a variety, by the title of ficus religiosa. It became so inseparable an adjunct of Buddhism that wherever the teaching of Shâkjamuni was spread this tree was transplanted too[3].
- ↑ Benares.
- ↑ Burnouf, Introd. à l'Hist. du Buddhisme, i. 157.
- ↑ In the far east of India and in Ceylon, where it is not indigenous, we have historical evidence that it was introduced by the Buddhists;
for Magadha, the more ancient name of the province, points to a time when Buddhism flourished there and had many such colleges (see Wilson in Journal of As. Soc. v. p. 124).
