ABSTRACT
Siddhartha was the given name and Gautama the family name of the founder of Buddhism. Legend has been prolifically at work on the scanty facts concerning the childhood of Gautama Siddhartha. Tradition insists that the father hoped his son would become "a universal monarch," the emperor of all India. During the dry season the Buddha annually sent his disciples out to preach, setting the example himself. During the three months of the rainy season, he and the monks gathered together, some here, some there, and lived a monastic life of self-discipline, instruction, and mutual service. The Buddha also rejected religious devotion as a way of salvation. The Buddhist traditions seek to illustrate this fact by setting the future Buddha symbolically in a predicament of cosmic scope. Prince Siddhartha thus experienced the earthly foretaste of Nirvana. He found them in the Deer Park at Varanasi, and there experienced a great personal triumph.
