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Updated: May 22, 2025
Those four great topes are those at the places where Buddha was born; where he attained to Wisdom; where he began to move the wheel of his Law; and where he attained to pari-nirvâna. Eitel says: "A naga king, the tutelary deity of a lake near which Sakyamuni once sat for seven days absorbed in meditation, whilst the king guarded him." ~Legend of King Asoka in a Former Birth~
Some twelve monks took part; one, the abbot, was a large, fine-looking man, and all had rather agreeable faces, quite unlike the brutal, vicious look of the lamas of Tachienlu. There was much that recalled the ritual of the Roman Catholic Church, processions, genuflexions, chanting, burning of incense, lighting of candles, tinkling of bells, all centring round a great figure of Sakyamuni.
Davids' Manual, p. 160; Hardy's E. M., pp. 23, 24. The eldest son of Sakyamuni by Yasodhara. He is now revered as the patron saint of all novices, and is to be reborn as the eldest son of every future Buddha. Eitel, p. 101. His mother also is to be reborn as Buddha. But it is only prajna which carries men across the samsara to the shores of nirvana." Eitel, p. 90.
His name in Pali is Angulimala. That he did become an Arhat is clear from his autobiographical poem in the "Songs of the Theras." Sakyamuni made this place his favourite residence for many years. See chapter xvii. See chapter xiii.
He mentions that ninety-six varieties of erroneous views are found among the Buddhists, which points to the existence of numerous but not acutely hostile sects and says that there still existed, apparently in Kośala, followers of Devadatta who recognized three previous Buddhas but not Śâkyamuni. He visited the birth-places of these three Buddhas which contained topes erected in their honour.
There is still the Abhayagiri tope, the highest in Ceylon, according to Davids, 250 feet in height, and built about B.C. 90, by Watta Gamini, in whose reign, about 160 years after the Council of Patna, and 330 years after the death of Sakyamuni, the Tripitaka was first reduced to writing in Ceylon; "Buddhism," p. 234.
Here the first synod assembled within a year after Sakyamuni's death. Eitel says it was built by Bimbisara, while Fa-Hsien ascribes it to Ajatasatru. I suppose the son finished what the father had begun. One of the five first followers of Sakyamuni. He is also called Asvajit; in Pali Assaji; but Asvajit seems to be a military title= "Master or trainer of horses."
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 and lions, and should not travel incautiously. Kapilavastu, "the city of beautiful virtue," was the birthplace of Sakyamuni, but was destroyed, as intimated in the notes on last chapter, during his lifetime.
The former is an encyclopædic work which contains inter alia a life of Sâkyamuni. It describes itself as belonging to the Lokottaravâdins, a section of the Âryamahâ-sanghikas. The Lokottaravâdins were an ancient sect, precursors of the Mahayana rather than a branch of it, and much of the Mahâvastu is parallel to the Pali Canon and may have been composed a century or two before our era.
It merely states that the King did honour or reverence to the birthplace of the Buddha, who receives no titles except Sakyamuni and Bhagavan here or elsewhere in the inscriptions. It is a simple record of respect paid to a great human teacher who is not in any way deified nor does Asoka's language show any trace of the doctrines afterwards known under the name of Mahayana.
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