Dialogues of the Buddha, Part II — trans. T. W. and C. A. F. Rhys Davids (1910)

' Be it so, sirs ! ' said Do«a the brahmin, in assent, to the assembled brethren. And he divided the remains of the Exalted One equally into eight parts, with fair division. And he said to them : — ' Give me, sirs, this vessel, and I will set up over it a sacred cairn, and in its honour will I establish a feast.'

And they gave the vessel to Do^a the brahmin.

26. And the Moriyas of Pipphalivana heard the news that the Exalted One had died at Kusinara.

Then the Moriyas of Pipphalivana sent a messenger to the Mallas, saying : — ' The Exalted One was a Kshatriya and so are we. We are worthy to receive a portion of the relics of the Exalted One. Over the remains of the Exalted One will we put up a sacred cairn, and in their honour will we celebrate a feast ! '

And when they heard the answer, saying: — 'There is

1 Here again the commentator expands and adds to the comparatively simple version of the text.

I90 XVI. MAHA PARTNTBBANA SUTTANTA. D. ii. 166.

no portion of the remains of the Exalted One left over. The remains of the Exalted One are all distributed,' then they took away the embers.

27. So the king of Magadha, Ajatasattu, the son of the queen of the Videha clan, made a cairn in Rajagaha over the remains of the Exalted One, and celebrated a feast [167].

And the Licchavis of Vesali made a cairn in Vesali over the remains of the Exalted One, and celebrated a feast.

And the Sakiyas of Kapila-vatthu made a cairn in
Kapila-vatthu over the remains of the Exalted One,
and celebrated a feast.

And the Bulis of Allakappa made a cairn in Allakappa over the remains of the Exalted One, and celebrated a feast.

And the Koliyas of Ramagama made a cairn in Ramagama over the remains of the Exalted One, and celebrated a feast.

And Ve///adipaka the brahmin made a cairn in Ve//£adipa over the remains of the Exalted One, and celebrated a feast.

And the Mallas of Pava. made a cairn in Pava. over the remains of the Exalted One, and celebrated a feast.

And the Mallas of Kusinara made a cairn in Kusinara over the remains of the Exalted One, and celebrated a feast.

And Do//a the brahmin made a cairn over the vessel [in which the remains had been collected] and celebrated a feast.

And the Moriyas of Pipphalivana made a cairn over the embers, and celebrated a feast.

Thus were there eight cairns (Thupas) for the
remains, and one for the vessel, and one for the embers.
This was how it used to be \

1 Here closes Buddhaghosa's long and edifying commentary. He has no note on the following verses, which he says were added by

p. 191

[28. Eight measures of relics there were of him of the far-seeing eye, Of the best of the best of men. In India seven are worshipped, And one measure in Ramagama, by the kings of the serpent race. One tooth, too, is honoured in heaven, and one in

Gandhara's city,
One in the Kalinga realm, and one more by the

Naga race.
Through their glory the bountiful earth is made

bright with offerings painless — For with such are the Great Teacher's relics best honoured by those who are honoured, By gods and by Nagas and kings, yea, thus by the

noblest of humans —
Bow down with clasped hands !
Hard, hard is a Buddha to meet with through

hundreds of ages !]

End of the Book of the Great Decease.

Theras in Ceylon. The additional verse found in the Phayre MS. was in the same way probably added in Burma.

INTRODUCTION

TO THE

MAHA-SUDASSANA-SUTTANTA.

This Suttanta is an expansion of the conversation recorded in the Book of the Great Decease (above, Ch. V, § 17).

The same legend recurs as the Maha-Sudassana Jataka, No. 95 in Mr. Fausboll's edition. As the latter differs in several important particulars from our Suttanta, it is probably not taken directly from it, but is merely derived from the same source. To facilitate comparison between the two I add here a translation of the Jataka.

The part enclosed in square brackets | | is the so-called Story of the Present : and the whole was probably written in Ceylon in the fifth century of our era. There is every reason to believe, for the reasons given in my ' Buddhist India ' (pp. 201-7), that the stories themselves belong to a very early period in the history of Buddhism and are, many of them, older even than Buddhism. We may be sure that if this particular story had been abstracted by the author of the commentary from our Suttanta, he would not have ventured to introduce such serious changes into what he regarded as sacred writ.