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 Śuddhodana[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 ṛishi) Â-e[7] inspected the marks[8] (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;[9] 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;[10] where, after he had
attained to Wisdom,[11] Buddha returned and saw the king, his
father;[12] where five hundred Śâkyas quitted their families and did
reverence to Upâli[13] 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;[14] where Buddha sat under a
nyagrodha tree, which is still standing,[15] with his face to the east,
and (his aunt) Mahâ-prajâpatî presented him with a Saṅghâli;[16] and
(where) king Vaidûrya slew the seed of Śâkya, and they all in dying
became Śrotâpannas.[17] A tope was erected at this last place, which is
still existing.
[Illustration: I. DREAM OF BUDDHA’S MOTHER OF HIS REINCARNATION.]
[Illustration: II. BUDDHA JUST BORN, WITH THE NÂGAS SUPPLYING WATER
TO WASH HIM.]
[Illustration: III. BUDDHA TOSSING THE ELEPHANT OVER THE WALL.]
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.[18]
Fifty le east from the city was a garden, named Lumbinî,[19] 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.[20] 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,[21] 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;[22] 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 Trayastriṃśas 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[23] and lions, and should not
travel incautiously.
NOTES
[1] Kapilavastu, ‘the city of beautiful virtue,’ was the birthplace
of Śâkyamuni, 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 Benâres.’
[2] The father, or supposed father, of Śâkyamuni. He is here called
‘the king white and pure’ (白淨王). A more common appellation
is ‘the king of pure rice’ (淨飯王); but the character 飯, or
‘rice,’ must be a mistake for 梵, ‘Brahmân,’ and the appellation =
‘Pure Brahmân king.’
[3] The ‘eldest son,’ or ‘prince’ was Śâkyamuni, and his mother had
no other son. For ‘his mother,’ see chap. xvii, note 3. She was a
daughter of Añjana or Anuśâkya, king of the neighbouring country of
Koli, and Yaśodharâ, an aunt of Śuddhodana. 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 Mahâ-mâyâ
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
(Siddhârtha, the first name given to Śâkyamuni; see Eitel, under
Sarvârthasiddha) 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 Kalâ Devala, and had
been a minister of Śuddhodana’s father.
[8] See chap. xiii, note 12.
[9] In ‘The Life of Buddha’ we read that the Lichchhavis of Vaiśâlî
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 Ânanda, but a half-brother of Siddhârtha), 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 撲捔象處, 射箭, 云云. Buddha,
that is Siddhârtha, was at this time only ten years old.
[10] The young Śâkyas were shooting when the prince thus surpassed
them all. He was then seventeen.
[11] See chap. xx, note 20.
[12] 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.
[13] They did this, I suppose, to show their humility, for Upâli was
only a Śûdra by birth, and had been a barber; so from the first did
Buddhism assert its superiority to the conditions of rank and caste.
Upâli 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.
[14] I have not met with the particulars of this preaching.
[15] 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 Gayâ to
Anurâdhapura in Ceylon in the middle of the third century B.C, and is
still growing there, the oldest historical tree in the world.
[16] See chap. xiii, note 11. I have not met with the account of this
presentation. See the long account of Prajâpatî in M. B., pp. 306–315.
[17] See chap. xx, note 10. The Śrotâpannas are the first class of
saints, who are not to be reborn in a lower sphere, but attain to
nirvâṇa after having been reborn seven times consecutively as men or
devas. The Chinese editions state there were ‘1000’ of the Śâkya seed.
The general account is that they were 500, all maidens, who refused
to take their place in king Vaidûrya’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 Śrotâpanna. ‘The Life
of the Buddha,’ p. 121.
[18] 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.
[19] ‘The place of Liberation;’ see chap. xiii, note 7.
[20] 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.
[21] 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).’
[22] 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.’
[23] 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.’