The Buddha 9For the following reasons he is a Blessed One: he is an Arhat, a per-
fectly and completely awakened one, perfect in his understanding and
conduct, happy, one who understands the world, an unsurpassed trainer
of unruly men, the teacher of both gods and men, a blessed buddha.^3
Such is a buddha in general terms, but what of the particular
buddha with whom we started, whose relics appear to have been
enshrined in a number of stupas across the north of India and to
whom the Buddhist tradition looks as its particular founder-
the historical Buddha? Let us for the moment consider the ques-
tion not so much from the perspective of the Buddhist tradition
as from the perspective of the historian.
The Buddha and the Indian 'renouacer' traditionWe can know very little of the historical Buddha with any degree
of certainty. Yet within the bounds of reasonable historical
probability we can form quite a clear picture of the kind of per-
son the Buddha was and the main events of his life. The oldest
Buddhist sources, which provide us with a number of details con-
cerning the person and life of the Buddha, date from the fourth
or third century BCE. Unfortunately when we tum to the non-
Buddhist sources of a similar date, namely the earliest texts of
the Jain and brahmanical traditions, there is no explicit mention
of the Buddha at all.^4 It would be a mistake to conclude, how-
ever, that non-Buddhist sources thus provide us with no corrob-
orative evidence for the picture of the Buddha painted in early
Buddhist texts. Essentially the latter present the Buddha as a
sramatJa (Pali samaf}a). This term means literally 'one who
strives' and belongs to the technical vocabulary of Indian reli-
gion, referring as it does to 'one who strives' religiously or spir-
itually. It points towards a particular tradition that in one way
or another has been of great significance in Indian religious his-
tory, be it Buddhist, Jain, or Hindu. Any quest for the historical
Buddha must begin with the sramatJa tradition. Collectively our
sources may not allow us to write the early history of this move-
ment but they do enable us to say a certain amount concerning
its character.