Volume I Part 31 (2/2)
[Footnote 320: If this discourse is regarded as giving in substance Gotama's own version of his experiences, it need not be supposed to mean much more than that his good angel (in European language) bade him not take his own life. But the argument represented as appealing to him was that if spirits sustained him with supernatural nourishment, entire abstinence from food would be a useless pretence.]
[Footnote 321: The remarkable figures known as ”fasting Buddhas” in Lah.o.r.e Museum and elsewhere represent Gotama in this condition and show very plainly the falling in of the belly.]
[Footnote 322: asava. The word appears to mean literally an intoxicating essence. See _e.g._ Vinaya, vol. IV. p. 110 (Rhys Davids and Oldenburg's ed.). Cf. the use of the word in Sanskrit.]
[Footnote 323: Naparam itthattayati. Itthattam is a substantive formed from ittham thus. It was at this time too that he thought out the chain of causation.]
[Footnote 324: Tradition states that it was on this occasion that he uttered the well-known stanzas now found in the Dhammapada 154-5 (cf.
Theragatha 183) in which he exults in having, after long search in repeated births, found the maker of the house. ”Now, O maker of the house thou art seen: no more shalt thou make a house.” The lines which follow are hard to translate. The ridge-pole of the house has been destroyed (visankhita? more literally de-com-posed) and so the mind pa.s.ses beyond the sankharas (visankharagata?). The play of words in visankhita? and visankhara can hardly be rendered in English.]
[Footnote 325: As Rhys Davids observes, this expression means ”to found the Kingdom of Righteousness” but the metaphor is to make the wheels of the chariot of righteousness move unopposed over all the Earth.]
[Footnote 326: At the modern Sarnath.]
[Footnote 327: It is from this point that he begins to use this t.i.tle in speaking of himself.]
[Footnote 328: Similar heavenly messages were often received by Christian mystics and were probably true as subjective experiences. Thus Suso was visited one Whitsunday by a heavenly messenger who bade him cease his mortifications.]
[Footnote 329: It is the Pipal tree or Ficus religiosa, as is mentioned in the Digha Nikaya, XIV. 30, not the Banyan. Its leaves have long points and tremble continually. Popular fancy says this is in memory of the tremendous struggle which they witnessed.]
[Footnote 330: Such are the Padhana-sutta of the Sutta-Nipata which has an air of antiquity and the tales in the Mahavagga of the Sa?yutta-Nikaya. The Mahavagga of the Vinaya (I. 11 and 13) mentions such an encounter but places it considerably later after the conversion of the five monks and of Yasa.]
[Footnote 331: The text is also found in the Sa?yutta-Nikaya.]
[Footnote 332: Concisely stated as suffering, the cause of suffering, the suppression of suffering and the method of effecting that suppression.]
[Footnote 333: Writers on Buddhism use this word in various forms, arhat, arahat and arahant. Perhaps it is best to use the Sanskrit form arhat just as karma and nirvana are commonly used instead of the Pali equivalents.]
[Footnote 334: I.15-20.]
[Footnote 335: Brahmayoni. I make this suggestion about gra.s.s fires because I have myself watched them from this point.]
[Footnote 336: This meal, the only solid one in the day, was taken a little before midday.]
[Footnote 337: I. 53-54.]
[Footnote 338: His father.]
[Footnote 339: _I.e._ the Buddha's former wife.]
[Footnote 340: Half brother of the Buddha and Suddhodana'a son by Mahapraj.a.pati.]
[Footnote 341: Jataka, 356.]
[Footnote 342: Mahavag. III. 1.]
[Footnote 343: Thus we hear how Dasama of Atthakam (Maj. Nik. 52) built one for fifteen hundred monks, and Ghotamukha another in Pataliputta, which bore his name.]
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