Vinaya (2): The Mahavagga
by T. W. Rhys Davids | 1881 | 156,382 words
The Mahavagga (part of the Vinaya collection) includes accounts of Gautama Buddha’s and the ten principal disciples’ awakenings, as well as rules for ordination, rules for reciting the Patimokkha during uposatha days, and various monastic procedures....
Mahavagga, Khandaka 1, Chapter 4
1. Then the Blessed One, at the end of those seven days, arose from that state of meditation, and went from the foot of the Mucalinda tree to the Rājāyatana (tree[1]); when he had reached it, he sat cross-legged at the foot of the Rājāyatana tree uninterruptedly during seven days, enjoying the bliss of emancipation.
2. At that time Tapussa and Bhallika, two merchants, came travelling on the road from Ukkala (Orissa) to that place. Then a deity who had been (in a former life) a blood-relatian of the merchants Tapussa and Bhallika, thus spoke to the merchants Tapussa and Bhallika: 'Here, my noble friends, at the foot of the Rājāyatana tree, is staying the Blessed One, who has just become Sambuddha. Go and show your reverence to him, the Blessed One, by (offering him) rice-cakes and lumps of honey. Long will this be to you for a good and for a blessing.'
3. And the merchants Tapussa and Bhallika took rice-cakes and lumps of honey, and went to the place where the Blessed One was; having approached him and respectfully saluted the Blessed One, they stationed themselves near him; standing near him, the merchants Tapussa and Bhallika thus addressed the Blessed One: 'May, O Lord, the Blessed One accept from us these rice-cakes and lumps of honey, that that may long be to us for a good and for a blessing!
4. Then the Blessed One thought: 'The Tathāgatas[2] do not accept (food) with their hands. Now with what shall I accept the rice-cakes and lumps of honey?' Then the four Mahārāja gods[3], understanding by the power of their minds the reflection which had arisen in the mind of the Blessed One, offered to the Blessed One from the four quarters (of the horizon) four bowls made of stone (saying), 'May, O Lord, the Blessed One accept herewith the rice-cakes and the lumps of honey!' The Blessed One accepted those new stone bowls; and therein be received the rice-cakes and honey lumps, and those, when he had received, he ate.
5. And Tapussa and Bhallika, the merchants, when they saw that the Blessed One had cleansed[4] his bowl and his hands, bowed down in reverence at the feet of the Blessed One and thus addressed the Blessed One: 'We take our refuge, Lord, in the Blessed One and in the Dhamma; may the Blessed One receive us as disciples who, from this day forth while our life lasts, have taken their refuge (in him).' These were the first in the world to become lay-disciples (of the Buddha) by the formula which contained (only) the dyad[5].
Here ends the account of what passed under the Rājāyatana tree.
Footnotes and references:
[1]:
Buddhaghosa says that Rājāyatana (lit. a royal apartment) was the name of a tree. It is the same tree which in the Lalita Vistara (p. 493, ed. Calcutta) is called Tārāyaṇa, and in the Dipavaṃsa (II, 50) Khīrapāla. The place where the two merchants met Buddha, is thus described in the Mahāvastu: kṣīri-kāvanaṣaṇḍe bahudevatake cetiye.
[2]:
The term Tathāgata is, in the Buddhistical literature, exclusively applied to Sammāsambuddhas, and it is more especially used in the Piṭakas when the Buddha is represented as speaking of himself in the third person as 'the Tathāgata.' The meaning 'sentient being,' which is given to the word in the Abhidhānappadīpikā, and in Childers's Dictionary, is not confirmed, as far as we know, by any passage of the Piṭakas. This translation of the word is very possibly based merely on a misunderstanding of the phrase often repeated in the Sutta Piṭaka: hoti tathāgato paraṃ maraṇā, which means, of course, 'does a Buddha exist after death?' In the Jaina books we sometimes find the term tatthagaya (tatragata), 'he who has attained that world, i.e. emancipation,' applied to the Jinas as opposed to other beings who are called ihagaya (idhagata), 'living in this world.' See, for instance, the Jinacaritra, § 16. Considering the close relation in which most of the dogmatical terms of the Jainas stand to those of the Bauddhas, it is difficult to believe that tathāgata and tatthagaya should not originally have conveyed very similar ideas. We think that on the long way from the original Māgadhī to the Pāli and Sanskrit, the term tatthagata or tatthāgata (tatra + āgata), 'he who has arrived there, i.e. at emancipation,' may very easily have undergone the change into tathāgata, which would have made it unintelligible, were we not able to compare its unaltered form as preserved by the Jainas.
[3]:
The four guardian gods of the quarters of the world; see Hardy's Manual, p. 24. Their Pāli names, as given in the Abhidhānappadīpikā, vv. 31, 32, the Dīpavaṃsa XVI, 12, &c., were, Dhataraṭṭha, Virūḷhaka, Virūpakkha, and Vessavaṇa or Kuvera.
[4]:
Onītapattapāṇi, which is said very frequently of a person who has finished his meal, is translated by Childers, 'whose hand is removed from the bowl' (comp. also Trenckner, Pali Miscellany, p. 66). We do not think this explanation right, though it agrees with, or probably is based on, a note of Buddhaghosa ('pattato ca apanītapāṇiṃ'). Onīta, i.e. avanita, is not apanīta, and the end of the dinner was marked, not by the Bhikkhu's removing his hand from the bowl, but by his washing the bowl (see Cullavagga VIII, 4, 6), and, of course, his hands. In Sanskrit the meaning of ava-nī is, to pour (water) upon something; see the Petershurg Dictionary. We have translated, therefore, onītapattapāṇi accordingly.
[5]:
Because there was no Saṃgha at that time, their declaration of taking refuge, by which they became upāsakas, could refer only to the dyad (the Buddha and the Dhamma), instead of to the triad of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Saṃgha.