Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.s1.t2.22

c8.s1.t2.22

[^ *]: "Anguttara Nikâya, Pañcaka-Nipâta." [^ †]: By this description of Sâriputta as "eldest son of the Church," it was not contemplated, however, that he might be called to be Buddha's to these two Brahmans, among those who stand closest to Buddha, is his own cousin, Ánanda, who, when still a youth, adopted the garb of a monk in company with a whole group of young nobles of Sakya family;* his brother Devadatta, whom we shall discover to be the apostate and traitor in the band, was likewise among these Sakyas. The care of Buddha’s person and the ordinary necessities of his daily life, were committed to Ánanda’s hands : often, when Buddha had left all the other disciples behind, it is Ánanda alone who accompanies him, and the narrative of Buddha’s last journeyings and of his farewell address gives, as we shall see, to Ánanda a role, which may well entitle him to be above all others known as the disciple “whom the Master loved.” Another member of this select circle was Upáli, who had formerly served the noble Sakyas as a barber, and who entered Buddha’s order at the same time with his masters. He is frequently mentioned in the sacred writings as the first propounder of the ecclesiastical law of the young Church; it is not improbable that he had a special share in the framing and the scholastic transmission of the old confessional liturgy, from which has sprung the whole ecclesiastical literature of Buddhism. Buddha’s own son, Râhula, whom he had begotten before leaving his father’s roof, also entered the order, and is not unfrequently mentioned with the great disciples already named; a prominent part, however, he does not seem to have played in this band.