er cannot
spare the easy charity of a miracle to provide for the wife and child,
but in taking it as an index of the character of Gotama, we must bear in
mind such sayings of Christ as "If any man come to me and hate not his
father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea
and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple[370]."

4

Political changes, in which however he took no part, occurred in the
last years of the Buddha's life. In Magadha Ajatasattu had come to the
throne. If, as the Vinaya represents, he at first supported the schism
of Devadatta, he subsequently became a patron of the Buddha. He was an
ambitious prince and fortified Pataligama (afterwards Pataliputra)
against the Vajjian confederation, which he destroyed a few years after
the Buddha's death. This confederation was an alliance of small
oligarchies like the Licchavis and Videhans. It would appear that this
form of constitution was on the wane in northern India and that the
monarchical states were annexing the decaying commonwealths. In Kosala,
Vidudabha conquered Kapilavatthu a year or two before the Buddha's
death, and is said to have perpetrated a great massacre of the Sakya
clan[371]. Possibly in consequence of these events the Buddha avoided
Kosala and the former Sakya territory. At any rate the record of his
last days opens at Rajagaha, the capital of Magadha.

This record is contained in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, the longest of
the suttas and evidently a compilation. The style is provokingly uneven.
It often promises to give a simple and natural narrative but such
passages are interrupted by more recent and less relevant matter. No
general estimate of its historical value can be given but each incident
must be apprized separately. Nearly all the events and discourses
recorded in it are found elsewhere in the canon in the same words[372]
and it contains explanatory matter of a suspiciously apologetic nature.
Also the supernatural element is freely introduced. But together with
all this it contains plain pathetic pictures of an old man's fatigue and
sufferings which would not have been inserted by a later hand, had they
not been found ready in tradition. And though events and sermonettes are
strung together in a way which is not artistic, there is nothing
improbable in the idea that the Buddha when he felt his end approaching
should have admonished his disciples about all that he thought most
important.

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