2 Or perhaps 'at Varaka.' I do not understand the word varaka, which has puzzled Mr. Fausboll. The modern name of the village, afterwards the site of the famous Buddhist university of Nalanda, is Baragaon. The full- moon day in Kattika is the 1st of December. An account of the death of Sariputta will be found in the Malalankara-vatthu (Bigandet, ' Legend,' &c, 3rd ed., II, 1-25), and of the murder of Moggallana by the NigaoMas in the Dhammapada commentary (Fausboll, p. 298 seq.), of which Spence Hardy's account (' Manual of Buddhism,' p. 338) is nearly a translation ; and Bigandet's account (loc. cit. pp. 25-27) is an abridgment.
not the Blessed One die in this little township 1 , in this little town in the jungle, in this branch township. Let the Blessed One die in one of the other great cities, such as Ra^agaha, and the rest ! '
But the Master answered, ' Say not, Ananda, that this is a little township, a little town in the jungle, a branch town- ship. I was dwelling formerly in this town at the time when I was Sudassana, the king of kings ; and then it was a great city, surrounded by a jewelled rampart, twelve leagues in length ! '
And at the request of the Thera, he, telling the tale, uttered the Maha-Sudassana Sutta.]
Now on that occasion when Queen Subhaddi saw Mahi Sudassana, when he had come down out of the Palace of Righteousness, and was lying down, not far off, on the appropriate couch, spread out in the grove of the seven kinds of gems, and when she said : * Thine, O king, are these four and eighty thousand cities, of which the chief is the royal city of Kusavdtt. Quicken thy desire after these ! '
Then replied Mah& Sudassana, 6 Speak not thus, O queen I
but exhort me rather, saying, " Cast away desire for these,
long not after them 2 ! " '
And when she asked, ' Why so, O king ? ' ' To-day my time is come, and I shall die ! ' was his reply 3 .
Then the weeping queen, wiping her eyes, brought her-
self with difficulty and distress to address him accordingly.
And having spoken, she wept, and lamented ; and the
other four and eighty thousand women wept too, and
lamented ; and of the attendant courtiers not one could
restrain himself, but all also wept.
But the Bodisat stopped them all, saying, ' Enough my friends ! Be still ! ' And he exhorted the queen, saying, ' Neither do thou, O queen, weep: neither do thou lament. For even unto a grain of sesamum fruit there is no such
1 Khuddaka-nagarake. See the note on Mahaparinibbana Sutta, ver. 60.
2 Both these speeches are different from those given on the same occasion in the Sutta below.
* This question and answer are not in the Sutta.
thing as a compound which is permanent I All are tran- sient, all have the inherent quality of dissolution ! '
And when he had so said, he further uttered this stanza :
* How transient are all component things !
Growth is their nature and decay:
They are produced, they are dissolved again :
And then is best, — when they have sunk to rest 1 ! 1
[In these verses the words 'How transient are all component things ! ' mean ' Dear lady, SubhaddA, where- soever and by whatsoever causes made or come together, compounds 2 , — that is, all those things which possess the essential constituents (whether material or mental) of exist- ing things 3 , — all these compounds are impermanence itself. For of these form 4 is impermanent, reason 6 is imperma- nent, the (mental) eye 6 is impermanent, and qualities 7 are impermanent. And whatever treasure there be, whether conscious or unconscious, that is transitory. Understand therefore " How transient are all component things ! "
'And why? "Growth is their nature and decay." These, all, have the inherent quality of coming into (indi- vidual) existence, and have also the inherent quality of growing old ; or (in other words) their very nature is to come into existence and to be broken up. Therefore should it be understood that they are impermanent.
' And since they are impermanent, when w they are produced, they are dissolved again." Having come into existence, having reached a state 8 , they are surely dissolved. For all these things come into existence, taking an individual form ; and are dissolved, being broken up. To them as soon as there is birth, there is what is called a state; as soon as there is a state, there is what is called
1 All this is omitted in the Sutta. It is true the verse occurs there, but it is placed in the Sutta in the mouth of the Teacher, after the account of Mahl
Sudassana's death.
The last clause is literally, ' Blessed is their cessation,' where the word for cessation, upasamo, is derived from the word sam, ' to be calm, to be quiet,' and means cessation by sinking into rest. Compare below.
a Sahkhara. 1 Khandayatanadayo. * Rupa**.
5 Vitfflanaw. 6 A'akkhuw. 7 Dhamma. 8 Thiti.
disintegration 1 . For to the unborn there is no such thing as state, and there is no such thing as a state which is without disintegration. Thus are all compounds, having attained to the three characteristic marks (of imperma- nency, pain, and want of any abiding principle 2 ), subject, in this way and in that way, to dissolution. All these component things therefore, without exception, are imper- manent, momentary 3 , despicable, unstable, disintegrating, trembling, quaking, unlasting, sure to depart 4 , only for a time 6 , and without substance as temporary 5 . as a phan- tom, as the mirage, or as foam !
' How then in these, dear lady Subhadd&, is there any sign of ease? Understand rather that "then is best, when they have sunk to rest;" but their sinking to rest, their cessation, comes from the cessation of the whole round (of life), and is the same as Nirvd«a. That and this are one 6 . And hence there is no such thing as ease.']
And when Mah& Sudassana had thus brought his dis- course to a point with the ambrosial great Nirv&#a, he made exhortation also to the rest of the great multitude, saying, c Give gifts ! Observe the precepts ! Keep the sacred days 7 ! ' and became an inheritor of the world of the gods.
[When the Master had concluded this lesson in the
truth, he summed up the G&taka, saying, 'She who was
then Subhaddi the queen was the mother of R&hula, the
great adviser was R&hula, the rest of the retinue the Bud-
dha's retinue, and Mahd Sudassana I myself.']
1 Bhango.
a AneHam, dukkhaw, anattam. See G&taka I, 275 ; and, on the last, Mah&parinibbana Sutta I, 10, and Mah& Vagga I, vi, 38-47.
3 Kha»ika\ See Oldenberg's note on Dipavawsa I, 53.
4 Payata, literally ' departed.' The forms pay&ti and pay §L to, given by Childers, should be corrected into p&y&ti and p&y&to. See 6fttaka I, 146.
5 T&vak&likl See Gataka I, 121, where the word is used of a cart let out on hire for a time only.
• Tad ev ekaw ekaw, which is not altogether without ambiguity. 7 This paragraph, too, is omitted in the Sutta.
mahA-sudassana sutta.
The word translated ' component things ' or 'compounds' in this G&taka is sankhdrd, literally confections, from kar, * to do/ and sam, 'together/ It is a word very fre- quently used in Buddhist writings, and a word consequently of many different connotations ; and there is, of course, no exactly corresponding word in English. 'Production' would often be very nearly correct, although it fails entirely to give the force of the preposition sam ; but a greater objec- tion to that word is the fact that it is generally used, not of things that have come into being of themselves, but of things that have been produced by some one else. It suggests, if it does not imply, a producer ; which is con- trary to the whole spirit of the Buddhist passages in which the word sahkh&r& occurs. In this important respect the word ' compound ' is a much more accurate translation, though it lays somewhat too much stress on the sam.
The term Confections (to coin a rendering) is sometimes used, as in the first line of these verses (as used in this con- nection), to denote all things which have been brought together, made up, by pre-existing causes ; and in this sense it includes, as the commentator here points out, all those material or mental qualities which unite to form an individual, a separate thing or being, whether conscious or unconscious.
It is more usually used, with special reference to their origin from pre-existing causes, and with allusion to the wider class denoted by the same word, of the mental con- fections only, of all sentient beings generally, or of man alone. In this sense it forms by itself one of the five classes or aggregates (khandhi) into which the material and mental qualities of each separate individual are divided in Buddhist writings— the class of dispositions, capabilities, and all that goes together to make what we call character. This class has naturally enough been again divided and subdivided ; and a full list of the Confections in this sense, as now acknowledged by orthodox Buddhists, will be found in my manual 'Buddhism.' At the time when the P41i Pi/akas reached their present form, no such elaborate list of Confections in detail seems to have been made ; but the
general sense of the word was, as is quite clear from the passages in which it occurs, the idea which these details together convey. It is this second and more usual meaning of the term which is more especially emphasised in the concluding verse of the above stanza.
I have ventured to dwell so far on the word Confections,
because the commentator here says that the cessation of
these Confections is the same thing as NirvA«a ; and the
question of Nirv£#a engrosses so large a share of the
attention of those who are interested in Buddhism.
Whether it is entitled to do so is open to serious question. The Buddhist salvation was held to consist in a change of heart, a modification of personal character, to be attained to in this world, and forming the subject of Gotama's first discourse, ' The Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteous- ness V When looked at from different points of view this state of mind was denoted, in the very numerous passages in which it is mentioned or referred to, under a great variety of different names or epithets, suggestive of the different points of view from which it could be regarded. The term Nibb&na, or NirvA«a, is only one of those epithets ; and it is a most significant fact, to which I would invite especial attention, that it is an epithet comparatively very seldom employed in the Pdli Pi/akas themselves. It is to the state of mind itself, the salvation which every Arahat has reached while yet alive, in a word, to Arahatship, that importance ought to be attached, rather than to that particular conno- tation of it suggested by the word Nirv&wa.
One of the many ideas involved in Arahatship was the absolute dissolution of individuality. Gotama, whether rightly or wrongly is here of no importance, held that freedom from pain, absolute ease, happiness, was incom- patible with existence as a distinct individual (whether animal, god, or man). The cessation of the Confections, so far from being a thing to be dreaded, was the inevitable result of the emancipation of heart and mind in Arahatship.
1 The Dhamma-£akka-ppavattana Sutta, translated below.
mahA-sudassana sutta.
But it was not a thing to be desired, and could not, in fact, be brought about apart from all the other things involved in Arahatship. The formation of these Confections ceases in Nirv&«a, and in Nirvct#a alone ; and when the poet declares that their cessation is blessed, he is saying the same thing as if he had said ' Nirvdtf a is blessed V
Turning now to the Sutta itself, we find that the portion of the legend omitted in the G&taka throws an unexpected light upon the tale ; for it commences with a long descrip- tion of the riches and glory of MahA Sudassana, and reveals in its details the instructive fact that the legend is nothing more nor less than a spiritualist's sun-myth.