Mythbusting the Buddha as a prince

Many Americans like to “do” a Scottish accent. These attempts all sound the same, but none of them are particularly like an actual Scottish person. The thing is that when an American does a Scottish accent, they are not imitating any Scot they have ever heard — they are imitating another American doing a Scottish accent. Who is in turn imitating another American doing a Scottish accent. And so on…

The American “Scottish” accent has become its own thing, rather detached from the reality of how Scots actually speak.

The stereotypical Buddha story

Something similar happens with books and articles about the Buddha. Over and over you’ll come across accounts like this:

The Buddha was born as Siddhartha Gotama. His father was a king, and wanting him to assume the throne when he was older, he kept the young Siddhartha from contact with the world, surrounding him in luxury in three palaces that he was not allowed to leave.

But Siddhartha was very curious, and persuaded his charioteer to take him out into the surrounding town. There, Siddhartha saw, for the first time, an old man. He was shocked by this, but his charioteer told him that this was the fate of everyone. On two subsequent trips, Siddhartha was again shocked by seeing a sick man and a corpse. Again, his charioteer informed him that this was the fate of us all — Siddhartha included.

On a fourth trip, Siddhartha saw a holy man walking through the town, serene and calm, and he knew that spiritual practice was his only hope for finding meaning and mental peace in this impermanent world. So in the dead of night he sneaked out of the palace and “went forth” into the holy life.

This is something I put together myself, rather than being a quote from any book or article, but I’m sure you’ve seen something like it many times.

The thing is, almost none of it is true — or at least, if you look at the scriptures you’ll either fail to find evidence for it or will find evidence that directly contradicts it.

Many books and articles on the Buddha and his teachings are a bit like the American “Scottish” accent I described: they are imitations of other books and articles, which are themselves imitations of other books and articles, probably going back to the late 19th century, when people in the west started to take Buddhism seriously, having realized that the Buddha was a historical figure, like Plato or Socrates, and not a mythic one, like Zeus or Odin. Like the American “Scottish” accent these accounts have developed a life of their own, and bear only a passing resemblance to the real thing — and in the case of the Buddha, the closest we have to a “real thing” is the early scriptures.

Usually we learn these stereotypical accounts long before we encounter those scriptures. And having already been told that the Buddha’s father was a king, we read accounts of Suddhodana and imagine him in a palace, surrounded by advisers and courtiers. As we read the scriptures, we see things that aren’t in them. Our original understanding of who the Buddha was remains untouched.

The Buddha was not a prince, because his dad wasn’t a king

Today I want to clarify that Suddhodana wasn’t a king, and Sakya, the territory he lived in, wasn’t a kingdom. I’ll deal with some of the other misconceptions in later articles.

Sakya, like some of its neighbors, was a republic, governed by a council of elders. It didn’t have a king. Therefore, the Buddha wasn’t a prince.

There were both monarchies and republics in north-east India at the Buddha’s time. In the map below, Kosala was a kingdom, ruled by Pasenadi and later by his patricidal son, Vidudabha. The Sakyans and their neighbors, the Koliyans and Mallas were republics.

The republics were not democracies, where everyone had a say, but oligarchies (government by the few), where the heads of the most powerful families were in charge of government. There was a council of elders that made decisions, sometimes witnessed by a wider assembly that represented other families and perhaps trade groups who wanted to ensure that their interests were represented.

The leader of the council was not a king. They had the title “raja,” but not “maharaja,” which was what kings like Pasenadi and Vidudabha were called. Raja, in this context, meant something more like “chief,” because the countries that had a republican form of government were not socially or technologically well-developed.

Sakya wasn’t all that

A priest from Kosala gave a very unflattering outsider’s portrait of the Buddha’s people: “The Sakyans are rude, harsh, touchy, and argumentative.  Primitive they are, and primitive they remain!” He was of course prejudiced.

Sakya was not a rich territory. It was rural and relatively poor. Its council would have met in a wood-and-mud hut that didn’t at all resemble a royal palace. In fact, excavations in Tilaurakot (the likely site of Kapilavastu, Sakya’s ancient capital) have revealed no palaces or impressive buildings at all from the time of the Buddha. The richest people there — like the Buddha and his folk — lived in wooden longhouses in which the animals were kept on the ground floor with the family living above. The most impressive buildings were made of mud bricks. The city was defended with a wooden palisade.

This was very different from how the leaders in the nearby monarchies lived. In the kingdom of Kosala, the king lived in an actual palace and had a standing army, which is something Sakya lacked. Standing armies were how kings (and the lands they governed) became rich. They could conquer neighboring lands, seize their wealth, and demand taxes.

One important scripture describes how the Buddha, as a boy, sat under a tree while his father plowed a field. It’s likely that, as a landowner, this is something that Suddhodana actually did. Some people explain this scene as being ceremonial, like the tree-planting or foundation-stone laying of a modern monarch. But what the Buddha-to-be did under the tree was to slip into a natural state of meditation, which isn’t very compatible with a regal event, which would be likely to include an audience, speeches, religious ceremonies, and men blowing on conch shells. It makes perfect sense, though, if we imagine a quiet rural scene with the head of the household doing his daily work.

How did people come to see the Buddha as a prince?

If the Buddha wasn’t a prince, how did people come to think of him that way?

Accounts of the of the Buddha as a prince arose just a few hundred years after his death.

While the Buddha was still alive, the republics were vassal states of the much more powerful monarchies. Shortly after his death, Sakya was brutally invaded by the Kosalan king, Vidudabha. Eventually monarchism became the only form of government people knew. After a few hundred years of monastic rule, people would largely have forgotten that there had ever been an alternative. So when people thought about past nations, they thought about them as having kings.

The reality is that Buddha left the wood-and-mud home where he lived above the livestock and became a religious wanderer. This is significant, but it’s not as dramatic as if he’s seen as a prince renouncing the throne. That’s a much larger sacrifice to make, and proves him to be a man capable of great things.

Clinging to beliefs

If you’ve believed the myth of the Buddha being a prince because you’ve been told it over and over, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s natural to believe what seemingly reliable sources tell us. Especially if lots of people are saying the same thing.

Maybe you still don’t believe me, but if you investigate the history of Sakya and the other north Indian republics you’ll realize that the Buddha wasn’t and couldn’t have been a prince.

Maybe you’ll be grateful to have a more accurate perspective on history.

But some people get angry when it’s pointed out that they’ve believed a myth. Sometimes that’s because, despite what they may say to the contrary, they have a “religious” view of Buddhism, meaning that, despite anything they say to the contrary, they treat Buddhism as a series of propositions to be believed. The person who points out their mistake is treated just as any blasphemer in any religion is treated. They are insulted, told to shut up, and told they know nothing.

Or sometimes we just don’t like to admit we’ve been wrong. That’s an ego thing, and it’s what we’re trying to get away from. Not clinging to beliefs was an important strand of the Buddha’s early teachings. Of course he stressed this precisely because we do tend to cling to what we believe. But it’s ironic when people emphasize that they’re the most faithful at practicing the Dharma (i.e. the Buddha’s teachings) by refusing to let go of a belief that’s demonstrably false. And when they accuse people of being “bad Buddhists” for following the Buddha’s teaching.

Why does it matter?

Truthfulness is fundamental to being an ethical person. If we are not prepared to face the truth, then we won’t live ethically, because it’s more “efficient” to do bad things and then just lie about them to ourselves and others. it’s efficient because it means we don’t have to expend as much effort.

The ethical thing to do when we realize we’ve inadvertently been passing on misinformation is to correct ourselves. When people refuse to do that it’s usually to do with believing, erroneously, that correcting yourself is a sign of weakness, which in turn is because of ego-clinging, which is what we’re trying to get away from. So having realized something is untruthful, the ethical thing is just to let go of it.

The opposite of defensiveness is humility, which is a powerful spiritual virtue. Humility allows us to recognize when we’ve been wrong, and to admit it. Humility is the practice of radical self-honesty.

Also, I believe that recognizing the truth of who the Buddha was brings us closer to him. Building up the Buddha’s going forth into a heroic act of renouncing the equivalent of multi-millionaire status might be intended to inspire us — “If he can give up all that, you can give up much less.” But it also makes the Buddha seem fundamentally different from us. His biography becomes a fairy-tale. He becomes, on some level, not real.

A mythic Buddha is one we can worship from afar, across a great gulf. To me, at least, a real, flesh-and-bones human being is one I can empathize with, understand, and feel close to.

The Buddha was very real. He watched his father plow fields. He sat in wood-and-mud-walled meeting halls listening to old men drone on about sacrificial ceremonies, and water rights, and disputes about cattle trespassing on fields. And he decided (why is something I’ll discuss later, and it had nothing to do with seeing four sights) that this wasn’t for him, and that he would seek the truth. And having found the truth, he taught this:

Herein someone avoids false speech and abstains from it. He speaks the truth, is devoted to truth, reliable, worthy of confidence, not a deceiver of people. Being at a meeting, or amongst people, or in the midst of his relatives, or in a society, or in the king’s court, and called upon and asked as witness to tell what he knows, he answers, if he knows nothing: “I know nothing,” and if he knows, he answers: “I know”; if he has seen nothing, he answers: “I have seen nothing,” and if he has seen, he answers: “I have seen.” Thus he never knowingly speaks a lie, either for the sake of his own advantage, or for the sake of another person’s advantage, or for the sake of any advantage whatsoever.

Those are words to live by, and to be remembered when we talk about the Buddha’s status in the republic of Sakya.

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