Signs of an earlier version of the archetype.

From Buddha, by Karen Armstrong:

The spirituality in the eastern Gangetic region was much more populist. In the west, the Upanisadic guarded their doctrines from the masses; in the east, theses questions were eagerly debated by the people. As we have seen they did not see the mendicant monks as useless parasites but as heroic pioneers. They were also honored as rebels. Like the Upanisadic sages, the monks defiantly rejected the old Vedic faith. At the start of his quest, an aspirant went through a ceremony known as the Pabbajja (“Going Forth”): he had become a person who had literally walked out of Aryan society. The ritual required that the renunciant remove all external signs of his caste and throw the utensils used in sacrifice into the fire. Henceforth, he would be called a Sannyasin (“Caster-Off”) and his yellow robe became the insignia of his rebellion. Finally, the new monk ritually and symbolically swallowed the sacred fire, as a way, perhaps, of declaring his choice of a more interior religion. He had deliberately rejected his place in the old world by repudiating the life of the householder, which was the backbone of the systen: the married man kept the economy going and produced the next generation, paid for the all-important sacrifices and took care of the poltical life of society. The monks, however, cast aside these duties and pursued a radical freedom. They had left behind the structured space of the home for the untamed forests; they were no longer subject to the constraints of caste, no longer debarred from any activity by the accident of their birth. Like the merchants, they were mobile and could roam the world at will, responsible to nobody but themselves. Like the merchants, therefore, they were the new men of the era, whose whole lifestyle expressed the heightened sense of individualism that characterized the period.

In leaving home, therefore, Gotama was not abjuring the modern world for a more traditional or even archaic lifestyle (as monks are often perceived to be doing today), but was in the vanguard of change.

Obviously, the Masterless Man’s violent channels contradict Buddhism, but maybe they came from someone who usurped Gautama later on.