| According to
accepted tradition, Mayadevi died a week after the birth of the child. Afraid of distinct
Mahaprajapati brought up, the child. Afraid of distinct religious trends in the boy,
Suddhodana took great care to surround him with worldly pleasures. Siddhartha was married to Yasodhara. Inspite of all attempts to shut
out the sights of miseries of the world from the eyes of the prince, he is supposed to
have seen four of them that turned his mind all the more towards the quest of peace and
truth.
It is a paradox that, while Buddhism claims more religious
adherents today in the world than any other religion, in its land of origin, i.e., India,
there are very few Buddhists and they are mostly from other countries. The spread of
Buddhism iti different countries, namely, Pakistan, Burma, Ceylon, China, Japan, Malaya
Cambodia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Thailand etc., and its infiltration to different parts
of Europe have been a very marked feature and the Buddhist scriptures have had different
shapes in different countries. |
