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The malbelievers regularly employed men to watch their devâlaya, to sweep and water all about it, to burn incense, light the lamps, and present offerings; but in the morning the lamps were found to have been suddenly removed, and in the vihâra of Buddha.
When Siddhartha left the grove, where the Buddha, the perfected one, stayed behind, where Govinda stayed behind, then he felt that in this grove his past life also stayed behind and parted from him. He pondered about this sensation, which filled him completely, as he was slowly walking along.
Some facts concerning the death of Ananda are hidden beneath the darkness of the phraseology, which it is impossible for us to ascertain. The account of Ananda's death in Nien-ch'ang's "History of Buddha and the Patriarchs" is much more extravagant. Crowds of men and devas are brought together to witness it. The body is divided into four parts.
Before proceeding to discuss the religion to which this somewhat monkish narrative forms the preface, it is necessary to say a few words on the relation which that religion is now supposed to hold to the general history of Indian piety. It was customary, till recently, to regard Buddha as a great reformer, and his religion as a great revolt against that which it found prevailing in India.
It is burning with the fire of lust, the fire of anger, with the fire of ignorance; it is burning with the sorrows of birth, decay, death, grief, lamentation, suffering, dejection and despair." The Buddha now went on with his converts to Râjagaha.
It is said to have been held two hundred and thirty-six years after the death of the Buddha and to have been necessitated by the fact that the favour shown to the Sangha induced heretics to become members of it without abandoning their errors. He did so.
There is nothing that can happen to us, however terrible, however miserable, that can justify tears and lamentations and make them aught but a weakness. And so, we are told, in this way the Buddha soothed the affliction of Ananda, and filled his soul with consolation the consolation of resignation.
The first part of this process was the slow and steady growth of this tree of divine revelation, successively putting forth its branches, shoots and offshoots, and revealing its leaves, buds and blossoms, as a direct consequence of the light and warmth imparted to it by a series of progressive dispensations associated with Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Muḥammad and other Prophets, and of the vernal showers of blood shed by countless martyrs in their path.
At any rate it is clear that the early generations of Buddhists considered that the Master conformed to the type of the Mahâpurusha and attached importance to the fact . The Pitakas repeatedly allude to the knowledge of these marks as forming a part of Brahmanic training and in the account of the previous Buddha Vipassî they are duly enumerated.
But Buddhist writers more commonly illustrate rebirth by fire than by water and this simile is used with others in the Questions of Milinda. We cannot assume that this book reflects the views of the Buddha or his immediate followers, but it is the work of an Indian in touch with good tradition who lived a few centuries later and expressed his opinions with lucidity.
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