KAPILAVASTU. ITS DESOLATION. LEGENDS OF BUDDHA’S BIRTH, AND OTHER
INCIDENTS IN CONNEXION WITH IT.
Less than a yojana to the east from this brought them to the city of
Kapilavastu;(1) but in it there was neither king nor people. All was
mound and desolation. Of inhabitants there were only some monks and a
score or two of families of the common people. At the spot where stood
the old palace of king Suddhodana(2) there have been made images of the
prince (his eldest son) and his mother;(3) and at the places where that
son appeared mounted on a white elephant when he entered his mother’s
womb,(4) and where he turned his carriage round on seeing the sick man
after he had gone out of the city by the eastern gate,(5) topes have
been erected. The places (were also pointed out)(6) where (the rishi)
A-e(7) inspected the marks (of Buddhaship on the body) of the
heir-apparent (when an infant); where, when he was in company with
Nanda and others, on the elephant being struck down and drawn to one
side, he tossed it away;(8) where he shot an arrow to the south-east,
and it went a distance of thirty le, then entering the ground and
making a spring to come forth, which men subsequently fashioned into a
well from which travellers might drink;(9) where, after he had attained
to Wisdom, Buddha returned and saw the king, his father;(10) where five
hundred Sakyas quitted their families and did reverence to Upali(11)
while the earth shook and moved in six different ways; where Buddha
preached his Law to the devas, and the four deva kings and others kept
the four doors (of the hall), so that (even) the king, his father,
could not enter;(12) where Buddha sat under a nyagrodha tree, which is
still standing,(13) with his face to the east, and (his aunt)
Maja-prajapati presented him with a Sanghali;(14) and (where) king
Vaidurya slew the seed of Sakya, and they all in dying became
Srotapannas.(15) A tope was erected at this last place, which is still
existing.
Several le north-east from the city was the king’s field, where the
heir-apparent sat under a tree, and looked at the ploughers.(16)
Fifty le east from the city was a garden, named Lumbini,(17) where the
queen entered the pond and bathed. Having come forth from the pond on
the northern bank, after (walking) twenty paces, she lifted up her
hand, laid hold of a branch of a tree, and, with her face to the east,
gave birth to the heir-apparent.(18) When he fell to the ground, he
(immediately) walked seven paces. Two dragon-kings (appeared) and
washed his body. At the place where they did so, there was immediately
formed a well, and from it, as well as from the above pond, where (the
queen) bathed,(19) the monks (even) now constantly take the water, and
drink it.
There are four places of regular and fixed occurrence (in the history
of) all Buddhas:—first, the place where they attained to perfect Wisdom
(and became Buddha); second, the place where they turned the wheel of
the Law;(20) third, the place where they preached the Law, discoursed
of righteousness, and discomfited (the advocates of) erroneous
doctrines; and fourth, the place where they came down, after going up
to the Trayatrimsas heaven to preach the Law for the benefit of their
mothers. Other places in connexion with them became remarkable,
according to the manifestations which were made at them at particular
times.
The country of Kapilavastu is a great scene of empty desolation. The
inhabitants are few and far between. On the roads people have to be on
their guard against white elephants(21) and lions, and should not
travel incautiously.
NOTES
(1) Kapilavastu, “the city of beautiful virtue,” was the birthplace of
Sâkyamuni, but was destroyed, as intimated in the notes on last
chapter, during his lifetime. It was situated a short distance
north-west of the present Goruckpoor, lat. 26° 46′ N., lon. 83° 19′ E.
Davids says (Manual, p. 25), “It was on the banks of the river Rohini,
the modern Kohana, about 100 miles north-west of the city of Benares.”
(2) The father, or supposed father, of Sâkyamuni. He is here called
“the king white and pure” ({.} {.} {.}). A more common appellation is
“the king of pure rice” ({.} {.} {.}); but the character {.}, or
“rice,” must be a mistake for {.}, “Brahman,” and the appellation=
“Pure Brahman king.”
(3) The “eldest son,” or “prince” was Sâkyamuni, and his mother had no
other son. For “his mother,” see chap. xvii, note 3. She was a daughter
of Anjana or Anusakya, king of the neighbouring country of Koli, and
Yasodhara, an aunt of Suddhodana. There appear to have been various
intermarriages between the royal houses of Kapila and Koli.
(4) In “The Life of the Buddha,” p. 15, we read that “Buddha was now in
the Tushita heaven, and knowing that his time was come (the time for
his last rebirth in the course of which he would become Buddha), he
made the necessary examinations; and having decided that Maha-maya was
the right mother, in the midnight watch he entered her womb under the
appearance of an elephant.” See M. B., pp. 140-143, and, still better,
Rhys Davids’ “Birth Stories,” pp. 58-63.
(5) In Hardy’s M. B., pp. 154, 155, we read, “As the prince
(Siddhartha, the first name given to Sâkyamuni; see Eitel, under
Sarvarthasiddha) was one day passing along, he saw a deva under the
appearance of a leper, full of sores, with a body like a water-vessel,
and legs like the pestle for pounding rice; and when he learned from
his charioteer what it was that he saw, he became agitated, and
returned at once to the palace.” See also Rhys Davids’ “Buddhism,” p.
29.
(6) This is an addition of my own, instead of “There are also topes
erected at the following spots,” of former translators. Fâ-Hien does
not say that there were memorial topes at all these places.
(7) Asita; see Eitel, p. 15. He is called in Pâli Kala Devala, and had
been a minister of Suddhodana’s father.
(8) In “The Life of Buddha” we read that the Lichchhavis of Vaisali had
sent to the young prince a very fine elephant; but when it was near
Kapilavastu, Devadatta, out of envy, killed it with a blow of his fist.
Nanda (not Ananda, but a half-brother of Siddhartha), coming that way,
saw the carcase lying on the road, and pulled it on one side; but the
Bodhisattva, seeing it there, took it by the tail, and tossed it over
seven fences and ditches, when the force of its fall made a great
ditch. I suspect that the characters in the column have been
disarranged, and that we should read {.} {.} {.} {.}, {.} {.}, {.} {.}.
Buddha, that is Siddhartha, was at this time only ten years old.
(9) The young Sakyas were shooting when the prince thus surpassed them
all. He was then seventeen.
(10) This was not the night when he finally fled from Kapilavastu, and
as he was leaving the palace, perceiving his sleeping father, and said,
“Father, though I love thee, yet a fear possesses me, and I may not
stay;”—The Life of the Buddha, p. 25. Most probably it was that related
in M. B., pp. 199-204. See “Buddhist Birth Stories,” pp. 120-127.
(11) They did this, I suppose, to show their humility, for Upali was
only a Sudra by birth, and had been a barber; so from the first did
Buddhism assert its superiority to the conditions of rank and caste.
Upali was distinguished by his knowledge of the rules of discipline,
and praised on that account by Buddha. He was one of the three leaders
of the first synod, and the principal compiler of the original Vinaya
books.
(12) I have not met with the particulars of this preaching.
(13) Meaning, as explained in Chinese, “a tree without knots;” the
_ficus Indica_. See Rhys Davids’ note, Manual, p. 39, where he says
that a branch of one of these trees was taken from Buddha Gaya to
Anuradhapura in Ceylon in the middle of the third century B.C, and is
still growing there, the oldest historical tree in the world.
(14) See chap. xiii, note 11. I have not met with the account of this
presentation. See the long account of Prajapati in M. B., pp. 306-315.
(15) See chap. xx, note 10. The Srotapannas are the first class of
saints, who are not to be reborn in a lower sphere, but attain to
nirvâna after having been reborn seven times consecutively as men or
devas. The Chinese editions state there were “1000” of the Sakya seed.
The general account is that they were 500, all maidens, who refused to
take their place in king Vaidurya’s harem, and were in consequence
taken to a pond, and had their hands and feet cut off. There Buddha
came to them, had their wounds dressed, and preached to them the Law.
They died in the faith, and were reborn in the region of the four Great
Kings. Thence they came back and visited Buddha at Jetavana in the
night, and there they obtained the reward of Srotapanna. “The Life of
the Buddha,” p. 121.
(16) See the account of this event in M. B., p. 150. The account of it
reminds me of the ploughing by the sovereign, which has been an
institution in China from the earliest times. But there we have no
magic and no extravagance.
(17) “The place of Liberation;” see chap. xiii, note 7.
(18) See the accounts of this event in M. B., pp. 145, 146; “The Life
of the Buddha,” pp. 15, 16; and “Buddhist Birth Stories,” p. 66.
(19) There is difficulty in construing the text of this last statement.
Mr. Beal had, no doubt inadvertently, omitted it in his first
translation. In his revised version he gives for it, I cannot say
happily, “As well as at the pool, the water of which came down from
above for washing (the child).”
(20) See chap. xvii, note 8. See also Davids’ Manual, p. 45. The latter
says, that “to turn the wheel of the Law” means “to set rolling the
royal chariot wheel of a universal empire of truth and righteousness;”
but he admits that this is more grandiloquent than the phraseology was
in the ears of Buddhists. I prefer the words quoted from Eitel in the
note referred to. “They turned” is probably equivalent to “They began
to turn.”
(21) Fâ-Hien does not say that he himself saw any of these white
elephants, nor does he speak of the lions as of any particular colour.
We shall find by-and-by, in a note further on, that, to make them
appear more terrible, they are spoken of as “black.”