" His separation
from her becomes in the later legend the theme of an affecting tale but
the scanty allusions to his family found in the Pitakas are devoid of
sentimental touches. A remarkable passage is preserved in the Anguttara
Nikaya[308] describing his feelings as a young man and may be the origin
of the story[309] about the four visions of old age, sickness, death and
of peace in the religious life. After describing the wealth and comfort
in which he lived[310], he says that he reflected how people feel
repulsion and disgust at the sight of old age, sickness and death. But
is this right? "I also" he thought "am subject to decay and am not free
from the power of old age, sickness and death. Is it right that I should
feel horror, repulsion and disgust when I see another in such plight?
And when I reflected thus, my disciples, all the joy of life which there
is in life died within me."

No connected account of his renunciation of the world has been found in
the Pitakas but[311] people are represented as saying that in spite of
his parents' grief he "went out from the household life into the
homeless state" while still a young man. Accepted tradition, confirmed
by the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, says that he retired from worldly life
when he was twenty-nine years old. The event is also commemorated in a
poem of the Sutta-Nipata[312] which reads like a very ancient ballad.

It relates how Bimbisara, King of Magadha, looking out from his palace,
saw an unknown ascetic, and feeling he was no ordinary person went
himself to visit him. It would appear from this that Gotama on leaving
his family went down to the plains and visited Rajagaha, the capital of
Magadha, now Rajgir to the south of Patna. The teachers of the Ganges
valley had probably a greater reputation for learning and sanctity than
the rough wits of the Sakya land and this may have attracted Gotama. At
any rate he applied himself diligently to acquire what knowledge could
be learned from contemporary teachers of religion. We have an account
put into his own mouth[313] of his experiences as the pupil of Alara
Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta but it gives few details of his studies. It
would appear however that they both had a fixed system (dhamma) to
impart and that their students lived in religious discipline (vinaya) as
members of an Order. They were therefore doing exactly what the Buddha
himself did later on a larger scale and with more conspicuous success.
The instr