Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.s1.t2.20

c8.s1.t2.20

Of the several personages in the narrower circle of disciples we cannot expect to have a life-like individual portrait. Here, as everywhere else in the literature of ancient India, we always meet merely with types, not individualities. We have already touched on this peculiarity: each of the chief disciples resembles every other, so that one might be taken for the other, the same conglomerate of perfect purity, perfect internal peace, perfect devotion to Buddha. These are not real individuals but the incarnated *esprit de corps* of the pupils of Buddha.