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

' Hinder not yourselves, Ananda, by honouring the remains of the Tathagata. Be zealous, I beseech you, Ananda, in your own behalf! Devote yourselves to your own good ! Be earnest, be zealous, be intent on your own good ! There are wise men, Ananda, among the nobles, among the brahmins, among the heads of houses, who are firm believers in the Tathagata ; and they will do due honour to the remains of the Tathagata.

p. 55

11. l ' But what should be done, lord, with the remains of the Tathagata ? '

1 As men treat the remains of a kino- of kin^s, so, o o

Ananda, should they treat the remains of a Tathagata.'
' And how, lord, do they treat the remains of a
king of kings 2 ? '

' They wrap the body of a king of kings, Ananda, in a newr cloth. When that is done they wrap it in carded cotton wool 3. When that is done they wrap it in a new cloth, [142] and so on till they have wrapped the body in five hundred successive layers of both kinds. Then they place the body in an oil vessel of iron, and cover that close up with another oil vessel of iron 4. They then build a funeral pyre of all kinds

1 This conversation occurs also below (VI, 17), and the older tradition probably had it only in that connexion.

2 King of kings is an adequate rendering of the ' King of the Rolling Wheel,' the wheels of whose chariot roll unhindered through the land ; that is to say, a king whose power no other king can dispute, who is an acknowledged overlord. The idea, which is explained very fully in the next Suttanta, may have arisen with the rise of the Kosala power ; but it may also be later. If we could trace its history it would afford us a guide to the date at which the Maha Parinibbana Suttanta assumed its present form.

3 Buddhaghosa explains this passage thus : — ' As Benares cloth, by reason of its fineness of texture, does not take the oil, he therefore says: — "with vihata cotton wool," that is, with cotton wool that has been well forced asunder.' The technical use of the word, as applied to cotton wool, has only been found in this passage. It usually means ' torn ' with grief.

4 Ayasaya tela-dowiya, where one would expect ayasaya, but my MS. of the Digha Nikaya confirms twice over here, and twice again below (VI, 33, 35) the reading given by Childers. Buddhaghosa says the word here means gold. Ay as was originally used for bronze, and only later for iron also, and at last exclusively of iron. As ka;«sa is already a common word for bronze in very early Buddhist Pali texts, I think ayasa (not ayasa) would here mean ' of iron.' When Buddhaghosa says it is here a name for gold, we can only conclude that iron had become, in his time, a metal which he might fairly consider too base for the purpose proposed. The whole process as described is not very intelligible; and one might suppose that ayasa after all had nothing to do with any metal, and was a technical term descriptive of some particular size or shape or colour of oil vessel. But it is frequently found in the MSS. when iron is clearly meant. Thus in thep. 156 of perfume, and burn the body of the king of kings. And then at the four cross roads they erect a cairn * to the king of kings. This, Ananda, is the way in which they treat the remains of a king of kings.