Maya (d. around 563 bce)

Indian princess . Died around 563 bce at Lumbini (in modern-day Nepal); elder sister of Mahapajapati ; married Suddhodanaa or Suddhodana (a noble prince of the Gautama [Gotama] clan, belonging to the Sakyas tribe who lived on the border of India and Nepal); children: Prince Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha (c. 563–483 bce).

The years 563 and 483 bce are generally accepted as the least controversial, if not the most plausible dates, for the birth and death of the Buddha. The historical facts of his life are these: he was born around 563 bce in what is now Nepal, near the Indian border. His full name was Siddhartha Gautama of the Sakyas clan. His father was a prince; his mother was a princess, and by the standards of the day his upbringing was luxurious.

Legend has it that in the middle of summer, under a full moon, Queen Maya fell asleep and dreamed that she was transported to the Himalayas, where her future son, in the guise of a white elephant, entered her womb through her side (thus suggesting a virgin birth). "In the instant that the future Buddha was conceived, the world had quivered and quaked," write David Leeming and Jake Page:

light filled the world; the blind saw; the deaf heard; the crooked of body grew straight; the lame walked; those in chains went free; the fires of hell were banked; disease disappeared; the weather grew fair; rain fell; rivers stopped flowing; … flowers fell in showers from the sky; the world became a garland. All these things happened for a brief time when the Buddha was conceived, and angels with swords arrived to guard the future Buddha and his mother from harm.

Near the time her baby was due to be born, Maya decided to visit her family in the city of Devadaha, and set off in a chair of gold carried by courtiers. She stopped on the way to admire beautiful Lumbini Grove, and there gave birth to the Buddha, standing up and holding on to a Sal tree (shorea robusta), an image often used in Buddhist art. (The Buddha himself would later meditate under a tree.) He was born clean and unbloodied, without afterbirth, and from the sky two streams of pure water washed over the newborn and his mother. Maya died seven days later, because "a womb that has held a future Buddha is like a temple shrine; it cannot be used again for another purpose," and was reborn, it is written, as the goddess Mahadevaputta.

sources:

Leeming, David, and Jake Page. Goddess: Myths of the Female Divine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.