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In Aryavarta, a northern province of ancient India south of the Himalayas, is the Roseapple Land called Jambudvipa, green with forests and jungles in the wet season, hot and dry in the hot season, chilly in the cold season. The land was sparsely settled twenty-six centuries ago, the tribes usually keeping to their own borders without much tension. Each tribe had its own chief city, connected to the cities of the other tribes by the great rivers and by overland trade-routes for ox-carts and horsemen. Civilization was centered in the great city of Baranasi, now called Banaras, on the holy river Ganga. The religion was the True Religion of the Vedas. The caste-system was solid. Marriage between blood relatives was held to be far preferable to mixing castes in marriage. The tribe of the Sakyas and that of the Koliyas north of the Ganga were friendly neighbors and intermarried freely. Thus it was that brother and sister of the Gautama clan of Sakyas married their cousins, sister and brother of the Kacchana clan of Koliyas. The son born to the Gautamas is the boy of this story. He married the girl born to the Kacchanas, his double cousin. Although inbred biologically, the boy had no physical defects. Instead, he exhibited signs of greatness from earliest childhood. This book is the story of his boyhood, youth, and early maturity, his human questionings, frustrations, and hard decisions. In adulthood his teachings expanded beyond all castes and classes, and in this present time his reverent followers number many millions all over the world.
Blossom of Buddha: The Prince, A Novel of the Life of Gautama Based on the Pali Canon and Other Buddhist Scriptures,Louise Ireland-Frey, Blue Dolphin Publishing, Paperback, 356 pp., $19.95
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