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

1 7. ' Again, Ananda, when a Tathagata arrives at the supreme and perfect enlightenment, then this earth quakes and trembles and is shaken violently. This is the fifth cause, proximate and remote, of the appearance of a mighty; earthquake.

18. ' Again, Ananda, when a Tathagata founds the sublime kingdom of righteousness, then this earth quakes and trembles and is shaken violently. This is the sixth cause, proximate and remote, of the appearance of a mighty^ earthquake.

19. ' Again, Ananda, when a Tathagata consciously and deliberately rejects the remainder of his life, then this earth quakes and trembles and is shaken violently.

1 The Bodhisatta's voluntary incarnation is looked upon by the Buddhists as a great act of renunciation, and curious legends have gathered about it. One is that on the night when she conceived his mother dreamt that a white elephant entered her side. The account will be found at length in my 'Buddhist Birth Stories ' (pp. 62-4), and the earthquake is there mentioned in terms identical with those in the text. As I have pointed out in 'Buddhism' (p. 184), the white elephant legend is one of those hallowed sun stories by which half-converted Indians strove to embellish the life-story of the Teacher whose followers they had become. In the Lalita Vistara (Calc. ed., p. 63) the entrance of the elephant into Maya precedes the dream ; but though the ignorant may have therefore accepted it as a fact, it is of course only a figure of speech — and I venture to think from the Indian standpoint, a beautiful figure of speech — to express the incarnation of divine mildness and majesty in a human form. The use of such a figure is not confined to India. In one of the Apocryphal Gospels, the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the incarnation of the divine gentleness and love is expressed by saying that a dove from heaven ' entered into ' the human form.

1). ii. 109. THE BOOK OF THE GREAT DECEASE. II7

This is the seventh cause, proximate and remote, of the appearance of almighty earthquake.

20. ' Again, Ananda, when a Tathagata passes entirely [109] away in that utter passing away in which nothing whatever is left behind, then this earth quakes and trembles and is shaken violently. This is the eighth cause, proximate and remote, of the appearance of a mighty earthquake.'

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21. ' Now of eight kinds, Ananda, are these assemblies. Which are the eight ? Assemblies of nobles, brahmins, householders and wanderers, and of the angel hosts of the Guardian Kings, of the Great Thirty-Three, of the Maras, and of the Brahmas.

22. ' Now I call to mind, Ananda, how when I used to enter into an assembly of many hundred : nobles, before I had seated myself there or talked to them or started a conversation with them, I used to become in colour like unto their colour, and in voice like unto their voice. Then with religious discourse I used to instruct and incite, and quicken them, and fill them with gladness. But they knew me not when I spoke, and would say : — " Who may this be who thus speaks ? a man or a god ? ' Then having instructed, incited, quickened, and gladdened them with religious discourse, I would vanish away. But they knew me not even when I vanished away : and would say : — " Who may this be who has thus vanished away ? a man or a god ? "