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This is interesting, for it seems to show that it was possible to accept Gotama's doctrine, or the greater part of it, as something independent of his personality and an inheritance from earlier teachers. The Udâna and Jâtaka relate another plot without specifying the year. Some heretics induced a nun called Sundarî to pretend she was the Buddha's concubine and hired assassins to murder her.
Now, at Pagan, the name they called her was Dwaymenau, but her true name, known only to herself, was Sundari, and she knew not the Law of the Blessed Buddha but was a heathen accursed. In the strong hollow of her hand she held the heart of the King, so that on the birth of her son she had risen from a mere concubine to be the second Queen and a power to whom all bowed.
In death I will not cheat him. What you have known is true. My child is no child of his. I will not go down to death with a lie upon my lips. Come and see." Dwaymenau was no more. Sundari, the Indian woman, awful and calm, led the Queen down the long ball and into her own chamber, where Mindon, the child, slept a drugged sleep.
"His true son, the son of Maya the Queen." "Not the younger the mongrel?" "The younger the mongrel died last week of a fever." Every moment of delay was precious. Her eyes saw only a monk and a boy fleeing across the wide river. "Which is Maya the Queen?" "This," said Sundari. "She cannot speak. It is her son the Prince." Maya had veiled her face with her hands.
His doubt was gone he laughed aloud. "Then feed full of vengeance!" he cried, and drove his knife through the child's heart. For a moment Sundari wavered where she stood, but she held herself and was rigid as the dead. "Tha-du! Well done!" she said with an awful smile. "The tree is broken, the roots cut. And now for us women our fate, O master?" "Wait here," he answered.
Their fury was partly checked when only a sleeping child and two women confronted them, but their leader, a grim and evil-looking man, strode from the huddle. "Where is the son of the King?" he shouted. "Speak, women! Whose is this boy?" Sundari laid her hand upon her son's shoulder. Not a muscle of her face flickered. "This is his son." "His true son the son of Maya the Queen?"
Here Buddha lived for a longer time than at any other place, preaching his Law and converting men. At the places where he walked and sat they also subsequently reared topes, each having its particular name; and here was the place where Sundari murdered a person and then falsely charged Buddha with the crime.
Once more they embraced, and then, strong and true, and with the Rajput passion behind the blow, the stroke fell and Sundari had given her sister the crowning mercy of deliverance. She laid the body beside her own son, composing the stately limbs, the quiet eyelids, the black lengths of hair into majesty.
The bright tears glittered in the eyes of Sundari at the tender name and the love in the face of the Queen. At last she accepted it. "My sister, no," she said, and drew from her bosom the dagger of Maya, with the man's blood rusted upon it. "Here is the way. I have kept this dagger in token of my debt.
In this passage Beal makes Sundari to be the name of the murdered person. ~The Three Predecessors of Sâkyamuni~ Fifty li to the west of the city brings the traveller to a town named Too-wei, the birthplace of Kâsyapa Buddha. At the place where he and his father met, and at that where he attained to pari-nirvâna, topes were erected.
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