Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
After that, it will ascend to the Tushita heaven; and when the Bodhisattva Maitreya sees it, he will say with a sigh, 'The alms-bowl of Sakyamuni Buddha is come; and with all the devas he will present to it flowers and incense for seven days. When these have expired, it will return to Jambudvipa, where it will be received by the king of the sea nagas, and taken into his naga palace.
It was in this town, or in its neighbourhood, that Sakyamuni spent many years of his life after he became Buddha. There were two Indian kingdoms of this name, a southern and a northern. This was the northern, a part of the present Oudh. In Singhalese, Pase-nadi, meaning "leader of the victorious army." He was one of the earliest converts and chief patrons of Sakyamuni.
See chap. xxii, note 2. For another legend about this park, and the identification of "a fine wood" still existing, see note in Beal's first version, p. 135. A prince of Magadha and a maternal uncle of Sakyamuni, who gave him the name of Ajnata, meaning automat; and hence he often appears as Ajnata Kaundinya.
"I have set myself a task," he explained, "which, if it could only be continued from generation to generation in our own family until it was completed, would make the name of West immortal. This is nothing less than to publish an English translation of the Buddhist Djarmas, with a preface giving an idea of the position of Brahminism before the coming of Sakyamuni.
The first of these works purports to be a discourse of Śâkyamuni himself, delivered on the Vulture's Peak in answer to the questions of Ânanda. He relates how innumerable ages ago there was a monk called Dharmâkara who, with the help of the Buddha of that period, made a vow or vows to become a Buddha but on conditions.
He is now the representative of the secular power, the valiant protector of the Buddhist body, but is looked upon as inferior to Sakyamuni, and every Buddhist saint. He appears several times in Fa-Hsien's narrative. E. H., pp. 108 and 46. At other times it means, as here, "in a former age," some pre-existent state in the time of a former birth. The incident related is "a Jataka story."
"The illuminating Buddha," the twenty-fourth predecessor of Sakyamuni, and who, so long before, gave him the assurance that he would by-and-by be Buddha. See Jataka Tales, p. 23. It is called a "pewter staff" from having on it a head and rings and pewter. These were the "marks and beauties" on the person of a supreme Buddha. Probably="all Buddhas." The number may appear too great.
It was in the Tushita heaven that Sâkyamuni met him and appointed him as his successor, to appear as Buddha after the lapse of five thousand years. ~The Perilous Crossing of the Indus~ The travellers went on to the southwest for fifteen days at the foot of the mountains, and following the course of their range.
According to other accounts Singhala was originally occupied by Rakshasas or Rakshas, "demons who devour men," and "beings to be feared," monstrous cannibals or anthropophagi, the terror of the shipwrecked mariner. His dragons or nagas have come before us again and again. That Sakyamuni ever visited Ceylon is to me more than doubtful.
Word Of The Day