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

Thus spake the Exalted One. Pleased were the brethren, delighting in that which was spoken by the Exalted One.

1 AFifia; one of the many epithets of Arahantship.

INTRODUCTION

TO THE

pAyAsi suttanta.

This Dialogue is one of the few which refer to events that took place in the Community after the Buddha's death. We hear from Dhammapala (in his commentary on the 1 Vimana Vatthu,' p. 297) that the Dialogue was believed, when he wrote (that is, at Kaficipura in South India in the fifth century) to have taken place after the erection of the cairns (thupas) over the ashes of the Teacher. He does not say how long after ; and the length of the interval is not very important, for all the Dialogues were put together more than fifty years at least after the Buddha's death 1. The difference is only this, that whereas the Dialogues in which the principal part is ascribed to the Buddha himself may well, and very often undoubtedly do, contain material much older than the date of the redaction of the Digha, this Suttanta (and that is also true of the few others that fall into the same category) may not. The difference is not great.

In this particular case we find nothing fresh in the Suttanta. The climax, led up to at the end, shows us a messenger from the gods coming down from heaven to teach the doctrine of generosity (dana) by laymen. We have discussed above in the Introduction to the - Maha-govinda Suttanta ' (p. 254) the reasons which induced ancient authors to bring down a divinity from heaven to support any particular opinion. Why was it done here ? It seems scarcely necessary.

True, the doctrine does not occupy a very high position in the earliest documents. It does not appear at all in the thirty-seven points (afterwards called the Bodhi-pakkhiyadhamma) in which the Buddha, just before his death, summed up his teaching2.

3 See the general Introduction to the 'Dialogues,' I, 19.

2 See above, pp. 128-30. The Wings of Wisdom are really only thirty, not thirty-seven, as seven of them are repeated. So there was plenty of room, had it been wanted, for charity. The Aryan Path is in the list. But the Path, though open to laymen and lay-women, contains no mention of dana.

It does not appear in the Dhammapada, an anthology of verses current in the Community on twenty-six subjects which the makers of the anthology held of most importance. There is a miscellaneous section into which verses on charity might well have been introduced, had it been considered a point of equal value with the rest ; but it is not there. It is the first and lowest in the list of the ten Paramitas, the virtues necessary to the attainment of Buddhahood \ But this list is a late one, and is not found in the Four Nikayas, or even in the Vinaya.

On the other hand there are several incidental references to giving in charity, and always by way of approval, in the Dialogues and the Sawyutta. And in the Anguttara (which contains a good deal more of the milk for babes than the other three of the great Nikayas) 2 there is a special Dana Vagga with seven short Suttas on the subject, and six or seven more are scattered through the work 3.

It is clear therefore, though this particular virtue is ranked after the thirty Wings of Wisdom, that it is accorded, in the earliest Buddhism, a very respectable place. Nevertheless at this particular juncture, when the death of their Master had weakened the prestige of the Order, it is quite possible that the brethren, finding their numbers in excess of the sources of income and support, should have found it advisable to invoke the help of a deus ex machina to set the discrepancy right.