* Be it so, sir ! ' said Do#a, in assent, to the assem-
1 Here again the commentator expands and adds to the com- paratively simple version of the text.
134 THE BOOK OF THE GREAT DECEASE.
bled brethren. And he divided the remains of the
Blessed 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 Br&hman.
61. And the Moriyas of Pipphalivana heard the news that the Blessed One had died at KusinArA.
Then the Moriyas of Pipphalivana sent a mes-
senger to the Mallas, saying, 1 The Blessed One
belonged to the soldier caste, and we too are of the
soldier caste. We are worthy to receive a portion of
the relics of the Blessed One. Over the remains of
the Blessed One will we put up a sacred cairn, and
in their honour will we celebrate a feast ! '
And when they heard the answer, saying, 1 There
is no portion of the remains of the Blessed One left
over. The remains of the Blessed One are all dis-
tributed/ then they took away the embers.
62. Then the king of Magadha, A^tasattu, the
son of the queen of the Videha clan, made a mound
in Rd^agaha over the remains of the Blessed One,
and held a feast.
And the lAkkhzvis of Vesdli made a mound in
Vesdli over the remains of the Blessed One, and
held a feast.
And the Bulis of Allakappa made a mound in
Allakappa over the remains of the Blessed One, and
held a feast.
And the Koliyas of Rlmag&ma made a mound in
Ramagdma over the remains of the Blessed One,
and held a feast.
maha-parinibbAna-sutta.
i3S
And VeMadipaka the Brahman made a mound in
Ve^adipa over the remains of the Blessed One, and
held a feast.
And the Mallas of P£vA made a mound in P£v£
over the remains of the Blessed One, and held a
feast.
And the Mallas of KusindrS. made a mound in
KusindrA over the remains of the Blessed One, and
held a feast.
And Do#a the Brfihman made a mound over the
vessel in which the body had been burnt, and held a
feast.
And the Moriyas of Pipphalivana made a mound over the embers, and held a feast.
Thus were there eight mounds [Thfipas] for the
remains, and one for the vessel, and one for the
embers. This was how it used to be \
[63. 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 R&magctma, by the kings of
the serpent race. One tooth, too, is honoured in heaven, and one in
Gandhdras city, One in the Kilinga realm, and one more by the
Naga race.
1 Here closes Buddhaghosa's long and edifying commentary. He has no note on the following verses, which he says were added by Theras in Ceylon. The additional verse found in the Phayre MS. was in the same way probably added in Burma.
1 36 THE BOOK OF THE GREAT DECEASE. CH. Vh
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 N&gas and kings, yea, thus by
the noblest of monarchs —
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.'
D H AM M AA'AK KAPPA VAT- TANA-SUTTA.
FOUNDATION OF THE KINGDOM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.
THIS translation is made from a transcript of the text
as found in the very beautiful Ceylon MS. on silver
plates, now in the British Museum The letters, which
are perfectly formed, are cut into the silver ; and the
MS. has this peculiarity, that every sentence is repeated
with a slight change in the collocation of the words.
Thus the first sentence is given as follows : —
Evaw me sutam. Rkam samayaw Bhagava
B&ra//asiyaw viharati Isipatane Migaddye. Me
evaw sutaw. Ekaw samayaw BhagavS, B&r£#asi-
ydLtn Isipatane Migad&ye viharati.
As this repetition is merely carried out for the further se- curity of the text it has not been followed in the translation.
This text belongs to the Ahguttara Nik&ya. M. L&m Feer has lithographed the Sawyutta treatment in his ' Textes tires du Kandjour V together with the text of the corresponding passage in the Lalita Vistara, and the Tibetan translation from that poem. The Sanskrit text, so far as it runs parallel with our Sutta, will also be found in Rajendra Lai Mitra's edition of the Lalita Vistara (p. 540 and foil.) and the Tibetan text, with a French translation, in M. Foucaux's ' rGya Cher Rol Pa.' Dr. Oldenberg has just published the Vinaya treatment contained in the Mahd Vagga I, 6. It is the same word for word as our Sutta (except § 1, which is of course not found there). The Sawyutta expands the idea of the portion numbered below §§ 9-20, having also similar paragraphs in reference to the bhikkhus themselves. The
1 MS. Egerton, 794; bought from a bookseller named Rodel in 1839. a Livraison, No. X.
I40 FOUNDATION OF KINGDOM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.
Lalita Vistara differs a good deal in minor details, but
is substantially the same as regards the Noble Truths,
and the eight divisions of the Noble Path.
A translation of this Sutta, found among Mr. Gogerly's
papers after his death, was published in the Journal of
the Ceylon Asiatic Society for 1865: and the Journal
Asiatique for 1870 contained a translation and full analysis
by M. L6on Feer.
It would be difficult to estimate too highly the historical value of this Sutta. There can be no reasonable doubt that the very ancient tradition accepted by all Buddhists as to the substance of the discourse is correct, and that we really have in it a summary of the words in which the great Indian thinker and reformer for the first time suc- cessfully promulgated his new ideas. And it presents to us in a few short and pithy sentences the very essence of that remarkable system which has had so profound an influence on the religious history of so large a portion of the human race.
The name given to it by the early Buddhists — the
setting in motion onwards of the royal chariot-wheel of
the supreme dominion of the Dhamma — means, as I have
shown elsewhere *, not ' the turning of the wheel of the
law/ as it has been usually rendered ; but c the inaugura-
tion, or foundation, of the Kingdom of Righteousness.'
Is it possible that the praying wheels of Thibet have led to the misapprehension and mistranslation now so common ? But who would explain a passage in the New Testament by a superstition current, say, in Spain in the twelfth century ? And so when Mr. Da Cuftha thinks that the Dhamma is symbolised by the wheel, because 'Gotama ignored the beginning, and was uncertain as to the end V h e seems to me to be following a vicious method of interpreting such figures of speech. It cannot be disputed that the term * wheel' might have implied such an idea as he puts into it. But if we want to know what it did imply, we must be guided wholly by the previous use of the word at the
1 ' Buddhism/ p. 45. 2 ' Memoir on the Tooth Relic,' &c, p. 15.
time when it was first used in a figurative sense : and that previous use allows only of the interpretation given above. Perhaps, however, Mr. Da Cunha is only copying (not very exactly) Mr. Alabaster, who has said, ' Buddha, as I have tried to show in other parts of this book, did not attempt to teach the beginning of existence, but as- sumed it as a rolling circle of causes or effects. This was his circle or wheel of the law V
Mr. Alabaster therefore calls his very useful book on Siamese Buddhism, c The Wheel of the Law ; ' — an ex- pression which he on the first page of his preface takes to be about equivalent to Buddhism. But his theory of the meaning of the term seems to be based upon a misunder- standing of a passage in the Siamese ' Life of Buddha/ which he there translates. At page 78 he renders his text, i The Holy Wheel which the Law taught is plenteous in twelve ways/ and he explains this on p. 169 as referring to the twelve Nid&nas, the chain of causes and effects. But the passage in the Siamese text is evidently a reminiscence of the ' twelvefold manner ' spoken of in the same connection in our Sutta (§21), and does not refer to the Nidanas at all.
A better comment on the word is the legend of the Treasure of the Wheel, which will be found below in the * Book of the Great King of Glory 2 / a passage which shows that this figure belonged to that circle of poetical imagery which the early Buddhists so often borrowed from the previous poets of Vedic literature to aid them in their attempts to describe the most important events in the life of their revered Teacher. And, like the day of Pentecost by the early Christians, this Inauguration of the Kingdom of Righteousness was rightly regarded by them as a turning-point in the history of their faith. We find this even in the closing sections of our Sutta ; and in later times the poets of every Buddhist clime have vied one with another in endeavouring to express their sense of the importance of the occasion.
i The evening was like a lovely maiden ; the stars
1 ' Wheel of the Law/ p. 388.
8 Chap. I, §§ 10-20.
142 FOUNDATION OF KINGDOM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.
were the pearls upon her neck ; the dark clouds her braided hair ; the deepening space her flowing robe. As a crown she had the heavens where the angels dwell ; these three worlds were as her body ; her eyes were the white lotus flowers which open to the rising moon ; and her voice was as it were the humming of the bees. To do homage to the Buddha, and to hear the first preaching of his word, this lovely maiden came.' The angels (devas) throng to hear the discourse until the heavens are empty ; and the sound of their approach is like the rain of a storm ; all the worlds in which there are sentient beings are made void of life, so that the congregation assembled was in number infinite, but at the sound of the blast of the glorious trumpet of Sakka, the king of the gods, they became still as a waveless sea. And then each of the countless listeners thought that the sage was looking towards himself, and was speaking to him in his own tongue, though the language used was M£gadhi !
It is most curious that this last figure should be so closely analogous to the language used with respect to the corresponding event in the history of the Christian church : and I do not know the exact source from which Hardy (Manual of Buddhism, p. 186) derives it. But I think it is highly improbable that there is any borrowing on the one side or on the other.
It cannot be denied that there is a real beauty of an Oriental kind in the various expressions which the Bud* dhists use ; and that there was real ground for the enthusiasm which gave them birth. Never in the history of the world had a scheme of salvation been put forth so simple in its nature, so free from any superhuman agency, so independent of, so even antagonistic to the belief in a soul, the belief in God, and the hope for a future life. And we must not allow our estimate of the importance of the event to be influenced by our dis- agreement from the opinions put forth. Whether these be right or wrong, it was a turning-point in the religious history of man when a reformer, full of the most earnest moral purpose, and trained in all the intellectual culture
of his time, put forth deliberately, and with a knowledge of the opposing views, the doctrine of a salvation to be found here, in this life, in an inward change of heart, to be brought about by perseverance in a mere system of self-culture and of self-control.