ply gave her the same
opportunity as others of receiving instruction. When the Licchavi
princes tried to induce him to dine with them instead of with her, he
refused to break his promise. The invitations of princes had no
attraction for him, and he was a prince himself. A fragment of
conversation introduced irrelevantly into his deathbed discourses[367]
is significant--"How, Lord, are we to conduct ourselves with regard to
womankind? Don't see them, Ananda. But if we see them, what are we to
do? Abstain from speech. But if they should speak to us what are we to
do? Keep wide awake."

This spirit is even more evident in the account of the admission of Nuns
to the order. When the Buddha was visiting his native town his aunt and
foster mother, Mahaprajapati, thrice begged him to grant this privilege
to women but was thrice refused and went away in tears. Then she
followed him to Vesali and stood in the entrance of the Kutagara Hall
"with swollen feet and covered with dust, and sorrowful." Ananda, who
had a tender heart, interviewed her and, going in to the Buddha,
submitted her request but received a triple refusal. But he was not to
be denied and urged that the Buddha admitted women to be capable of
attaining saintship and that it was unjust to refuse the blessings of
religion to one who had suckled him. At last Gotama yielded--perhaps the
only instance in which he is represented as convinced by argument--but he
added "If, Ananda, women had not received permission to enter the Order,
the pure religion would have lasted long, the good law would have stood
fast a thousand years. But since they had received that permission, it
will now stand fast for only five hundred years[368]."

He maintained and approved the same hard detached attitude in other
domestic relations. His son Rahula received special instruction but is
not represented as enjoying his confidence like Ananda. A remarkable
narrative relates how, when the monk Sangamaji was sitting beneath a
tree absorbed in meditation, his former wife (whom he had left on
abandoning the world) laid his child before him and said "Here, monk, is
your little son, nourish me and nourish him." But Sangamaji took no
notice and the woman went away. The Buddha who observed what happened
said "He feels no pleasure when she comes, no sorrow when she goes: him
I call a true Brahman released from passion[369]." This narrative is
repulsive to European sentiment, particularly as the chronicl