The four omens that inspired Siddhartha’s search for truth

What made the Prince leave his palace pleasures and embark on an unknown journey, in an unknown quest to find an unknown treasure

Nine months before Siddhartha’s birth, his mother Queen Mahamaya Devi, who had long been childless, has a strange dream. She dreams being carried forth by the four world deities to the tableland of the Himalayas where the wives of the four guardians welcome her and take her to the lake Mansarovar. They bathe her in its cool waters and then dress her in robes of exquisite beauty. They deck her with gold ornaments and garland her with heaven scented flowers.

Then through the mist that engulfs the Himalayan plateau, she sees a white silvery elephant of magnificent countenance, approaching her. It walks with measured steps and with noble bearing. It circles her thrice, and, then, with a salutation with its raised trunk, enters the very core of her being.

She awakes from her dream and, mystified by what she had just dreamt, shakes her husband, the king, to stir him from his royal sleep; and she relates her dream to him. Mystified as she is by the unknown import of this strange dream, he summons the royal astrologers at the break of morn’s dawn to interpret its import and explain to him, their king, the true significance of the dream.

The royal astrologers’ predict the Queen is destined to give birth to a son who will do his father proud. “He will be,” they proclaim, “a ruler not only of this province, but of the world, an emperor whose empire will last forever.”

The Queen, steeped as she is in the knowledge of ancient India, asks them: “But will not death steal the spoils of any empire?”

And, they in turn, give her reply. “Nay, whilst death will indeed rob the accumulation of wealth and power, it is impotent in the face of the eternal. Your son will not rule with arms which are but fleeting but will conquer with his philosophical doctrine which is eternal, one that will outlast empires built on shifting sands.”

King Suddhodana will have none of this rubbish. He flares in rage and says: “What, my son another wandering fakir, babbling stanzas from the Upanishads when he has a kingdom to overlord, defend and administer as any noble Kshatriyan of the warrior caste would be duty bound to do, irrespective of his private predilections?”

“Religion is for the Brahmins,” he declares in an outburst of anger and tells the Brahmin soothsayers. “You can use the monopoly you enjoy having, as you profess to have, sole access to God. But no son of mine is going to be a hermit, a beggar, parroting lines from the Rig Veda in return for a measly bowl of alms. My son is a Kshatriyan, a warrior, born of noble blood, born to rule in the self same way of his ancestors, in the manner his caste dictates and Kshatriyan honour demands.”

“But Your Majesty,” the royal astrologers interrupt to pacify the ire of their king, “there is, however, hope your son will follow the blood line. Two paths lie before your son. One will take him to worldly power. The other will condemn him to the life of an ascetic. But if you can ensure that he does not see the helplessness of the tottering aged, the anguish of the suffering sick, the inertness of inevitable death and the sublime radiance of the unfettered ascetic, then the chances are he will indeed be the Chakravarthi, the emperor of the world.”

The sages are asking the impossible but the king is defiant.

“Leave that to me,” the king replies with confidence, his ire more calmed now with the way out presented to him by the sages, “I will ensure he will see none of these sights you mentioned. From the day he is born, the old, the sick, the dead and the ascetics will be banished from these royal walls. I will ensure that he will not be exposed to those four bad omens. I will see that my son will follow the path of his ancestors,” and he dismisses his royal astrologers with contempt from his sight.

Little does the king know that the path of Siddhartha’s ancestors lie in the way 27 others have trod before. And that though a king can ban, by royal edict, unseemly sights from his royal capital, no royal fiat can exile fate. And that if the omens are barred from visiting the Prince, then Siddhartha will leave his palace walls to visit them.