1. Gotamaka.-A class of ascetics, enumerated in a list of such classes. (A.iii.276. Does deva-dhammiká in Ap.ii.358 (vs.11) qualify Gotamá?) Rhys Davids thinks they were almost certainly the followers of some other member of the Sákiyan clan, as distinct from the Buddha, and suggests that it might have been Devadatta or possibly a brahmin of the Gotamagotta. (Dial.i.222; but see his article on Buddhist Law in ERE.; see also Brethren 265, n.3). The Lalita-vistara (p.492), however, speaks of the Gautamas in a list of nine such sects; the Gotamakas and the Gautamas are evidently identical, as several of the other classes correspond with the Páli. According to the Lalita-vistara, these sects existed even before the Buddha, for they are represented as meeting and addressing him in the sixth week after the Enlightenment, on his way to the Ajapála-tree. We hear no more of them in subsequent history.
2. Gotamaka.-A yakkba. See Gotamakacetiya.
3. Gotamaka.-See Kanha-Gotamaka.