Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.35

c8.35

As regards another group of legendary touches, it may well be in part doubted whether we have not in them historical memories. The elements of the tradition regarding Buddha hitherto mentioned flowed from the universal belief in Buddha's all-overpowering might and nobility, but the much more important and more prominent characteristics, of which we shall now have to treat, have their origin partly in the special theological predicates which Buddhist speculation affirmed of the holy, knowing, Delivered One, and partly in the external events which regularly occurred in the life of the Indian ascetic, and which consequently, according to an inference so naturally drawn by legend, cannot have been wanting in the life of Buddha, the ideal ascetic.