Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.32

c8.32

It is obvious that the appearance of the deliverer of the world on earth, must have presented itself to the believer’s mind as an event of incomparable importance; to the Indian, who was and is accustomed, in the most trivial incidents of his own daily life, to pay attention to concomitant omens, it would have been the most impossible contingency if the conception of the exalted, holy, universal Buddha had not been already announced by the mightiest wonders and signs, and if the whole universe had not joined in its celebration. An inconceivably bright flash of light pierces through the universe; the worlds quake; the four divinities, who have in their protection the four quarters of the heavens, combine to keep guard over the pregnant mother. The birth is attended by wonders in no less a degree. The Brahmans possessed lists of bodily signs which import good and bad fortunes to men; the infant Buddha must obviously bear on his person all auspicious marks in the highest perfection, in the same perfection as a world-ruling monarch; the soothsayers declare: “if he choose a worldly life, he will become a ruler of the world; if he renounce the world, he will become the Buddha.”