Dictionary of Pali Proper Names v1.c14.1052

v1.c14.1052

1. Gotamaka.—A class of ascetics, enumerated in a list of such classes.¹ Rhys Davids thinks² they were almost certainly the followers of some other member of the Sākyan clan, as distinct from the Buddha, and suggests that it might have been Devadatta or possibly a brahmin of the Gotamagotta. The *Lalita-vistara*,³ however, speaks of the Gautamas in a list of nine such sects; the Gotamakas and the Gautamas are evidently identical, as several of the other classes correspond with the Pāli. According to the *Lalita-vistara*, these sects existed even before the Buddha, for they are represented as meeting and addressing him in the sixth week after the Enlightenment, on his way to the Ajapāla-tree. We hear no more of them in subsequent history.