WHERE BUDDHA FINALLY RENOUNCED THE WORLD, AND WHERE HE DIED.
East from here four yojanas, there is the place where the heir-apparent
sent back Chandaka, with his white horse;(1) and there also a tope was
erected.
Four yojanas to the east from this, (the travellers) came to the
Charcoal tope,(2) where there is also a monastery.
Going on twelve yojanas, still to the east, they came to the city of
Kusanagara,(3) on the north of which, between two trees,(4) on the bank
of the Nairanjana(5) river, is the place where the World-honoured one,
with his head to the north, attained to pari-nirvâna (and died). There
also are the places where Subhadra,(6) the last (of his converts),
attained to Wisdom (and became an Arhat); where in his coffin of gold
they made offerings to the World-honoured one for seven days,(7) where
the Vajrapani laid aside his golden club,(8) and where the eight
kings(9) divided the relics (of the burnt body):—at all these places
were built topes and monasteries, all of which are now existing.
In the city the inhabitants are few and far between, comprising only
the families belonging to the (different) societies of monks.
Going from this to the south-east for twelve yojanas, they came to the
place where the Lichchhavis(10) wished to follow Buddha to (the place
of) his pari-nirvâna, and where, when he would not listen to them and
they kept cleaving to him, unwilling to go away, he made to appear a
large and deep ditch which they could not cross over, and gave them his
alms-bowl, as a pledge of his regard, (thus) sending them back to their
families. There a stone pillar was erected with an account of this
event engraved upon it.
NOTES
(1) This was on the night when Sâkyamuni finally left his palace and
family to fulfil the course to which he felt that he was called.
Chandaka, in Pâli Channa, was the prince’s charioteer, and in sympathy
with him. So also was the white horse Kanthaka (Kanthakanam Asvaraja),
which neighed his delight till the devas heard him. See M. B., pp.
158-161, and Davids’ Manual, pp. 32, 33. According to “Buddhist Birth
Stories,” p. 87, the noble horse never returned to the city, but died
of grief at being left by his master, to be reborn immediately in the
Trayastrimsas heaven as the deva Kanthaka!
(2) Beal and Giles call this the “Ashes” tope. I also would have
preferred to call it so; but the Chinese character is {.}, not {.}.
Rémusat has “la tour des charbons.” It was over the place of Buddha’s
cremation.
(3) In Pâli Kusinara. It got its name from the Kusa grass (the _poa
cynosuroides_); and its ruins are still extant, near Kusiah, 180 N.W.
from Patna; “about,” says Davids, “120 miles N.N.E. of Benares, and 80
miles due east of Kapilavastu.”
(4) The Sala tree, the _Shorea robusta_, which yields the famous teak
wood.
(5) Confounded, according to Eitel, even by Hsuan-chwang, with the
Hiranyavati, which flows past the city on the south.
(6) A Brahman of Benares, said to have been 120 years old, who came to
learn from Buddha the very night he died. Ananda would have repulsed
him; but Buddha ordered him to be introduced; and then putting aside
the ingenious but unimportant question which he propounded, preached to
him the Law. The Brahman was converted and attained at once to
Arhatship. Eitel says that he attained to nirvâna a few moments before
Sâkyamuni; but see the full account of him and his conversion in
“Buddhist Suttas,” p. 103-110.
(7) Thus treating the dead Buddha as if he had been a Chakravartti
king. Hardy’s M. B., p. 347, says:—“For the place of cremation, the
princes (of Kusinara) offered their own coronation-hall, which was
decorated with the utmost magnificence, and the body was deposited in a
golden sarcophagus.” See the account of a cremation which Fâ-Hien
witnessed in Ceylon, chap. xxxix.
(8) The name Vajrapani is explained as “he who holds in his hand the
diamond club (or pestle=sceptre),” which is one of the many names of
Indra or Sakra. He therefore, that great protector of Buddhism, would
seem to be intended here; but the difficulty with me is that neither in
Hardy nor Rockhill, nor any other writer, have I met with any
manifestation of himself made by Indra on this occasion. The princes of
Kusanagara were called mallas, “strong or mighty heroes;” so also were
those of Pava and Vaisali; and a question arises whether the language
may not refer to some story which Fâ-Hien had heard,—something which
they did on this great occasion. Vajrapani is also explained as meaning
“the diamond mighty hero;” but the epithet of “diamond” is not so
applicable to them as to Indra. The clause may hereafter obtain more
elucidation.
(9) Of Kusanagara, Pava, Vaisali, and other kingdoms. Kings, princes,
brahmans,—each wanted the whole relic; but they agreed to an eightfold
division at the suggestion of the brahman Drona.
(10) These “strong heroes” were the chiefs of Vaisali, a kingdom and
city, with an oligarchical constitution. They embraced Buddhism early,
and were noted for their peculiar attachment to Buddha. The second
synod was held at Vaisali, as related in the next chapter. The ruins of
the city still exist at Bassahar, north of Patna, the same, I suppose,
as Besarh, twenty miles north of Hajipur. See Beal’s Revised Version,
p. lii.