The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c6.8

c6.8

In the third place, it is a belief no less generally admitted in India that whoever has attained to sanctity possesses, among other supernatural faculties, the privilege of remembering his past existences and even those of others. This gift of extra-lucid intuition, or, as it was called, of « divine sight », no one, of course, was considered to possess in a more eminent degree than Buddha. Now it was, we are told, his habit, with regard to incidents arising in the bosom of his community, to point or justify his prohibitions or his precepts by the opportune reminiscence of some analogous occasion which had already confronted him in the course of his previous lives.