a, go and ask him for your inheritance.' Then young Rahula
went to the place where the Lord was, and standing before him said 'Your
shadow, Monk, is a place of bliss.' Then the Lord rose from his seat and
went away but Rahula followed him saying 'Give me my inheritance, Monk.'
Then the Lord said to Sariputta (who had already become his chief
disciple) 'Well, Sariputta, confer the preliminary ordination on young
Rahula.' Sariputta asked how he should do so and the Buddha explained
the forms.

"Then the Sakka Suddhodana went to the place where the Lord was and
after respectfully saluting him asked for a boon. 'Lord, when the
Blessed One gave up the world, it was great pain to me and so it was
when Nanda[340] did the same. Great too was my pain when Rahula did it.
The love for a son, Lord, cuts into the skin, the flesh, the bones, and
reaches the marrow. Let not the preliminary ordination be conferred on a
son without his parents' permission.' The Buddha assented. Three or four
years later Suddhodana died."

From Kapilavatthu the Buddha is said to have gone to Savatthi, the
capital of Kosala where Pasenadi was king, but now we lose the
chronological thread and do not find it again until the last years of
his life. Few of the numerous incidents recorded in the Pitakas can be
dated. The narrators resemble those Indian artists who when carving a
story in relief place all the principal figures in one panel without
attempting to mark the sequence of the incidents which are represented
simultaneously. For the connection of events with the Buddha's teaching
the compilers of the Pitakas had an eye; for their connection with his
life none at all. And though this attitude is disquieting to the
historic sense it is not unjustifiable. The object and the achievement
of the Buddha was to preach a certain doctrine and to found an order.
All the rest--years and countries, pains and pleasures--was of no
importance. And it would appear that we have not lost much: we should
have a greater sense of security if we had an orderly account of his
wanderings and his relations with the kings of his time, but after he
had once entered on his ministry the events which broke the peaceful
tenour of his long life were few and we probably know most of them
though we cannot date them. For about forty-five years he moved about
Kosala, Magadha and Anga visiting the two capitals Savatthi and Rajagaha
and going as far west as the country of the Kurus. He too