A class of ascetics, enumerated in a list of such classes. (A.iii.276. Does deva-dhammikā in Ap.ii.358 (vs.11) qualify Gotamā?) Rhys Davids thinks they were almost certainly the followers of some other member of the Sakyan 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 Pāḷi. 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 Ajapāla-tree. We hear no more of them in subsequent history.