Note 9 — Chapter XXXIV · ON THE WAY BACK TO PATNA. VÂRÂṆASÎ, OR BENÂRES. ŚÂKYAMUNI’S FIRST DOINGS AFTER BECOMING BUDDHA.

This is the only instance in Fâ-hien’s text where the Bodhisattva or Buddha is called by the surname ‘Gotama.’ For the most part our traveller uses Buddha as a proper name, though it properly means ‘The Enlightened.’ He uses also the combinations ‘Śâkya Buddha,’ = ‘The Buddha of the Śâkya tribe,’ and ‘Śâkyamuni,’ = ‘The Śâkya sage.’ This last is the most common designation of the Buddha in China, and to my mind best combines the characteristics of a descriptive and a proper name. Among other Buddhistic peoples ‘Gotama’ and ‘Gotama Buddha’ are the more frequent designations. It is not easy to account for the rise of the surname Gotama in the Śâkya family, as Oldenberg acknowledges. He says that ‘the Śâkyas, in accordance with the custom of Indian noble families, had borrowed it from one of the ancient Vedic bard families.’ Dr. Davids (‘Buddhism,’ p. 27) says: ‘The family name was certainly Gautama,’ adding in a note, ‘It is a curious fact that Gautama is still the family name of the Rajput chiefs of Nagâra, the village which has been identified with Kapilavastu.’ Dr. Eitel says that ‘Gautama was the sacerdotal name of the Śâkya family, which counted the ancient ṛishi Gautama among its ancestors.’ When we proceed, however, to endeavour to trace the connexion of that Brahmânical ṛishi with the Śâkya house, by means of 1323, 1468, 1469, and other historical works in Nanjio’s Catalogue, we soon find that Indian histories have no surer foundation than the shifting sand;—see E. H., on the name Śâkya, pp. 108, 109. We must be content for the present simply to accept Gotama as one of the surnames of the Buddha with whom we have to do.