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

He, Sakka, is present at the death of the Buddha and utters, in verse, a simple lament very different from the thoughtful verses ascribed to Brahma (above, p. 1 75).

He proclaims a eulogy on the Buddha, in which he emphasizes eight points of comparatively simple character (above, p. 260).

These Nikaya passages are sufficient to show that Sakka was considered by the early Buddhists to be a god of high character indeed, kindly and just ; but not perfect, and not very intelligent. He has reached as far as a good layman might have reached, to the point where his conversion was immanent.

Outward conditions.

Sakka dwells in the Tavatiwsa heaven, that is, in the heaven of the thirty-three great gods of the Vedic pantheon.

1 This Sutta is repeated at Sa/wyutta IV, 201.

J The very words of the Sakka-panha are here used.

This is not by any means the highest plane of being, nor is it quite the lowest. It is an essential part of the early Buddhist cosmogony (and not held by any other school in India) that there were twenty-six planes of celestial beings : — 1. The Four Great Kings, guardians of the four quarters of the world. 2. The Thirty-Three. 3. The Yama gods. 4. The Tusita gods. 5. The Nimmana-rati gods. 6. The Paranimittavasavatti gods l. Above these are the twenty worlds of Brahma. For practical ethical purposes the stress is laid on two planes only — the six just mentioned, which have a collective name (Kamavacara-devaloka), and the world of Brahma 2. It is only the lower of these two that is meant when heaven (sagga) is referred to. Sakka dwells therefore in the lowest heaven but one of the lower plane.

There he dwells in the palace Victoria (Vejayanta, S. I,
235, 6). It was built by Sakka, is described at Majjhima
I, 253, and is illustrated on the Bharahat Tope 3.

Dwelling in that palace he is king over all the Thirty-Three. When the gods fight the Titans (Asuras) it is under his banner, and under his orders, that they fight. But he is no absolute monarch. He is imagined in the likeness of a chieftain of a Kosala clan. The gods meet and deliberate in their Hall of Good Counsel ; and Sakka, on ordinary peaceful occasions, consults with them rather than issues to them his commands. Yet in ten matters he surpasses them all — in length of life, in beauty, in happiness, in renown, and in lordship, and in the degree of his five sensations, sight, hearing, smelling, taste, and touch (A. IV, 242).

Titles.

Sakka. In its Sanskrit form, S'akra, it occurs nearly fifty times in the Vedas as an adjective qualifying gods (usually Indra). It is explained as meaning ' able, capable *.' It is not found as a name in pre- Buddhistic literature.

Kosiya used, not in speaking of, but in speaking to Sakka, just as the family (gotta) name, not the personal name, is used

1 These are often mentioned in sequence. See, for instance, above,
Vol. I, pp. 280, 281.

2 The later Maha-bharata borrowed this idea, though, as Hopkins points out (' Religions of India,' 358), it is 'a view quite foreign to the teaching current elsewhere in the epic'

3 Cunningham, ' Stupa of Bharhut,' p. 137.

4 For another derivation, a pretty piece of word-play, see Sawyutta,
I, 230.