Birth of the Baby Buddha
This passage is from the Buddha-charita, the first complete biography of the Buddha, written by the poet Ashvaghosha, probably in the first century C.E. The Buddha-charita is made up of twenty-eight songs recounting events in Shakyamuni Buddha’s life up to the time of his great awakening. These verses speak of Shakyamuni’s family and the events that surrounded the birth of the historical Buddha. Original spellings and usages from this 1893 translation by Edward B. Cowell have been retained throughout:
Then one day by the king’s permission the queen, having a great longing in her mind, went with the inmates of the gynaceum into the garden Lumbini.
As the queen supported herself by a bough which hung laden with a weight of flowers, the Bodhisattva suddenly came forth, cleaving open her womb.
At that time the constellation Pushya was auspicious, and from the side of the queen, who was purified by her vow, her son was born for the welfare of the world, without pain and without illness.
Like the sun bursting from a cloud in the morning, so he too, when he was born from his mother’s womb, made the world bright like gold, bursting forth with his rays which dispelled the darkness.
As soon as he was born the thousand-eyed (Indra) well-pleased took him gently, bright like a golden pillar; and two pure streams of water fell down from heaven upon his head with piles of Mandara flowers.
Carried about by the chief suras, and delighting them with the rays that streamed from his body, he surpassed in beauty the new moon as it rests on a mass of evening clouds.
Having thus in due time issued from the womb, he shone as if he had come down from heaven, he who had not been born in the natural way—he who was born full of wisdom, not foolish—as if his mind had been purified by countless aeons of contemplation.