Princess Yasodharā was the wife of Prince Siddhartha, who became known as the Buddha and founder of Buddhism.
Life
She was the daughter of Prince Suppabuddha and his wife Pamita of the Shakya tribe. At the age of 16, she was married to her cousin, the Shakya prince of the same age, Siddhartha.
At the age of 29, Yasodharā gave birth to their son Rāhula, whom she raised in the palace of Prince Suddhodana as the new heir to the throne after Siddhartha left his wife and the paternal palace to live as a wandering ascetic.
Many years later, when Siddhartha had become the Buddha, she and her mother-in-law Mahapajapati Gotami, Siddhartha's foster mother, entered the Buddha's order as nuns and eventually became arhats.
Legends
Many legends surround the figure of Yasodhara. One of them is an encounter in a previous life in the age of the Buddha Dipamkara, in which she met the ascetic Sumedha as a noble woman named Sumitra and spontaneously vowed to be a supportive consort to him in all future rebirths until he attained Buddhahood.
In the Candakinnara Jataka, she intercepted with her body an arrow that threatened to strike the bodhisattva who would one day become the Buddha Shakyamuni.
