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 3, Chapter 1
1. At that time the Blessed One dwelt at Rājagaha, in the Veḷuvana, in the Kalandakanivāpa[1]. At that time the retreat during the rainy season had not yet been instituted by the Blessed One for the Bhikkhus. Thus the Bhikkhus went on their travels alike during winter, summer, and the rainy season.
2. People were annoyed, murmured, and became angry, saying, 'How can the Sakyaputtiya Samaṇas go on their travels alike during winter, summer, and the rainy season? They crush the green herbs, they hurt vegetable life[2], they destroy the life of many small living things. Shall the ascetics who belong to Titthiya schools, whose doctrine is ill preached, retire during the rainy season and arrange places for themselves to live in[3]? shall the birds make their nests on the summits of the trees, and retire during the rainy season, and arrange themselves places to live in; and yet the Sakyaputtiya Samaṇas go on their travels alike during winter, summer, and the rainy season, crushing the green herbs, hurting vegetable life, and destroying the life of many small things?'
3. Now some Bhikkhus heard those people that were annoyed, murmured, and had become angry. These Bhikkhus told this thing to the Blessed One. In consequence of that and on this occasion the Blessed One, after having delivered a religious discourse, thus addressed the Bhikkhus: 'I prescribe, O Bhikkhus, that you enter upon Vassa[4].'
Footnotes and references:
[1]:
See the note on I, 22, 17. About the name of Kalandakanivāpa (seeds of Kalandaka? feeding ground for squirrels?), see the story related in Beal, Romantic Legend, &c., p. 315, where this place is said to be the gift of a merchant named Kalandaka. A different account is given by Spence Hardy, Manual, p. 194.
[2]:
Literally, living creatures which have but one organ of sense; that is, which have only the organ of feeling, viz. the outward form (kāya).
[3]:
Saṃkāpayissanti = saṃkappafissanti? Buddhaghosa: appossukka-nibaddha-vāsaṃ vasissanti.
[4]:
I.e. enter upon the retreat prescribed for the rainy season. Buddhaghosa: 'They are to look after their Vihāra (if it is in a proper state), to provide food and water for themselves, to fulfil all due ceremonies, such as paying reverence to sacred shrines, &c., and to say loudly once, or twice, or thrice: "I enter upon Vassa in this Vihāra for these three months." Thus they are to enter upon Vassa.'