DEVADATTA, the son of Suklodana, who was younger bro ther to the father of the Buddha (Mandvastu, iii. 76). Both he and his brother Ananda, who were considerably younger than the Buddha, joined the brotherhood in the twentieth year of the Bud dha's ministry. Devadatta, fifteen years afterwards, having gained over the crown prince of Magadha, Ajatasattu, to his side, made a formal proposition, at the meeting of the order, that the Buddha should retire, and hand over the leadership to him, Devadatta (Vinaya Texts, iii. 238; dtaka, i. 142). This proposal was re jected, and Devadatta is said in the tradition to have successfully instigated the prince to the execution of his aged father and to have made three abortive attempts to bring about the death of the Buddha (Vinaya Texts, iii. 241-25o; Jataka, vi. 131). Shortly afterwards, relying upon the feeling of the people in favour of asceticism, he brought forward four propositions for ascetic rules to be imposed on the order. These being refused, he appealed to the people, started an order of his own, and gained over 5oo of the Buddha's community to join in the secession. We hear nothing further about the success or otherwise of the new order, but it may possibly be referred to under the name of the Gotamakas, in the Anguttara (see Dialogues of the Buddha, 1. 222), for Devadatta's family name was Gotama. But his community was certainly still in existence in the 4th century A.D., for it is especially mentioned by Fa Hien, the Chinese pilgrim (Legge's translation, p. 62). And it possibly lasted till the 7th century, for Hstian Tsang mentions that in a monastery in Bengal the monks then followed a certain regulation of Devadatta's (T. Wafters, On Yuan Chwang, 19i). There is no mention in the canon as to how or when Devadatta died; but the commentary on the Jataka, written in the 5th cen tury A.D., has preserved a tradition that he was swallowed up by the earth near Savatthi, when on his way to ask pardon of the Buddha (fataka, iv. 158). The spot where this occurred was shown to both the pilgrims just mentioned (Fa Hien, /oc. cit. p. 6o; and T. Watters, On Yuan Chwang,i. 39o).
Texts, translated by Rhys Davids and H. Oldenberg (3 vols., Oxford, 1881-85) ; The Jiitaka, edited by V. Faus boll (7 vols., London, 1877-97) ; T. Watters, On Yuan Chwang (ed. Rhys Davids and Bushell, 2 vols., London, 1904–o5) ; Fa Hien, trans lated by J. Legge (Oxford, 1886) ; Mahavastu (ed. Tenant, 3 vols., Paris, 1882-1897). (T. W. R. D.) DE VALERA, EAMON (1882— ), Irish politician, was born in New York City Oct. 14, 1882, of a Spanish father and an Irish mother. He was sent to his mother's home at Charleville, Co. Cork, as a child, and was educated at Blackrock College and the Royal University, Dublin. In 1913 he became an ardent sup porter of the newly formed Irish volunteers and in the Easter rising of 1916 commanded a party of the insurgents. On April 3o he surrendered and was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. On June 5, 1917, however, he was released under the terms of the general amnesty, and immediately set about the reorganization and extension of the Republican party known as Sinn Fein, closely associated with the Irish Republican Army.
Elected in the month of his release from internment to sit in the Parliament at Westminster as member for East Clare, he adopted the abstentionist policy advocated by Arthur Griffith and was chosen President of an Irish Republic, with a Dail (or Irish Parliament) sitting in Dublin. In May, 1918, he was re arrested on the charge of planning another rising and imprisoned in Lincoln Gaol. He escaped on Feb. 3, 1919, and succeeded in reaching the United States, where, as President of the Irish Re public, he collected large funds for the revolutionary movement on the security of Republican bonds.
In 1921 a truce was called in the Anglo-Irish war, and he ap pointed plenipotentiaries to negotiate a settlement with the British Government. He repudiated the treaty establishing the Irish Free State which had been signed by his two principal colleagues, . Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins, and upon being defeated in the Dail by a narrow majority resigned the Presidency and again took the field with the Republican forces.
In Aug. 1923, he was captured and once mcre imprisoned. Upon being released in July, 1924, he resumed the active political leadership of Sinn Fein as a Republican party with a policy of abstention—this time from the Dail. Two years later a split oc curred within the party on this policy, and in Aug. 1927, he led a new party of 44, entitled Fianna Fail, into the Free State Par liament and took the oath of allegiance to the King, issuing in explanation a statement that the oath was "an empty political formula." After the 1932 election de Valera became president of the Executive Council. He abolished the oath of allegiance to the King, and withheld payment of the land annuities to Great Britain. In 1933 he was president of the League of Nations Assembly.