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the clan. Therefore Suddhodana was probably a local leader rather than a great king and his status has been exaggerated over time.

Siddhartha's mother Mahamaya (Maya) is believed to have given birth on the full moon in May in a garden called Lumbini. There are a lot of legends and stories surrounding his birth. At the time of conception, Maya dreamed that a white elephant entered her womb (white elephants were a very lucky symbol). In the Pali Canon it is suggested that the conception was a miracle with the bodhisattva (Buddha-to-be) descending from the heaven where he spent his previous life directly into his mother's womb. Some stories add to this by saying that the Queen became pregnant while under a temporary vow of chastity, but Ashvaghosa does not include these details in his account.

His birth is also surrounded by miraculous details. The pregnancy was supposed to last for 10 months. Maya gave birth while standing holding a sal tree and the bodhisattva was born from her side and was completely clean. Gods and goddesses from the heavens came to witness his birth and the earth shook as he was born. He was bathed with miraculous jets of water and immediately stood up, took seven steps and pronounced that this was the last time he would be reborn.

Most Buddhists would see this story as a myth a symbolic account that shows that the Buddha was not an ordinary man, but a unique human being.

The Buddha's mother Maya died seven days after he was born and he was brought up by Pajapati, his mother's sister, who also married his father. A prophecy was made at his birth by an old Brahmin wise man called Asita. He said that the boy would grow up to be either a great ruler or a religious teacher depending on whether he stopped to think about suffering. As a result, the legend says that his father tried to keep all knowledge of suffering from him.

The Pali Canon tells us very little about his early life. We know that he was brought up in luxury and was probably very well educated by the standards of the time. He lived in his father's three palaces and had teachers and servants who attended to all his needs. In spite of this he appears to have grown up to be a considerate and thoughtful child. Later legends describe him as a brilliant child who knew many languages and was skilled in martial arts, but the accuracy of these accounts is not clear.

One of the events described is where he sat under a roseapple tree while his father was working, and in the peace he achieved the

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