Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T12:15:48.732Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

XXIV. The Tradition about the Corporeal Relics of Buddha

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

J. F. Fleet
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

By way of a preliminary to some further remarks on the inscription on the Piprāhavā relic-vase, which I shall present when a facsimile of the record can be given with them, I offer a study of an interesting side-issue, the tradition regarding the corporeal relics of Buddha.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , July 1906 , pp. 655 - 671
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1906

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 655 note 1 I have been using hitherto the form Piprāwā, which I took over from another writer. But it appears, from Major Vost's article on Kapilavastu (page 553 ff. above), that the correct form of the name is that which I now adopt.

page 657 note 1 Using Childers' text, which is divided into rather long paragraphs, I found the translation very useful in leading me quickly to the points to be noted. The translation, however, cannot he followed as an infallible guide; and I have had to take my own line in interpreting the text at various places.

While revising these proofs, I have seen for the first time Tumour's article in JASB, 7, 1838. 991 ff., where he gave a translation of the sixth chapter (the one in which we are interested) of this Sutta, and an abstract of the preceding ones. By the later translator, Tumour's work has been dismissed with the observation (SBE, 11. introd., 31) that, “ though a most valuable contribution for the time, now more than half a century ago,” it “ has not been of much service for the present purpose.” Nevertheless, there are several details in which it contrasts very favourably with the later translation.

page 657 note 2 In this Sutta, Buddha is most usually designated as the Bhagavat. But other appellations of him used in it are the Tathāgata, the Sugata, the Saṁbuddha, and the Samaṇa Gōtama. The appellation Buddha occurs in the expression :—amhākaṁ Buddhō ahu khantivādō ; “ our Buddha was one who used to preach forbearance ” (text, 259/166), in the speech of the Brāhmaṇ Dōṇa, when he was asking the claimants not to quarrel over the division of the relics.

The word used for “ he died ” is parinibbāyi (text, 252/156). From that point, the text constantly presents parinibbuta to describe him as “ dead ; ” and it several times, both here and in previous passages, presents parinibbāna to denote his “ death.” And, just after the statement that he died, it places in the mouth of the venerable Anuruddha a gāthā of which the last line runs:— Pajjōtass=ēva nibbānaṁ vimōkhō chētasō ahū; “ just like the extinction of a lamp, there was a deliverance (of him) from consciousness, conscious existence.”

The text thus establishes nibbuta (Sanskṛit, nirvṛita) as the exact equivalent of parinibbuta (Skt., parinirvṛita) in the sense of ‘ dead.’ And it establishes nibbāna (Skt., nirvāṇa), and any such Sanskṛit terms as vimōksha, mōksha, mukti, etc., as the exact equivalent of parinibbāna (Skt., parinirvāṇna) in the sense of ‘ death.’

I mention this because a view has been expressed that, in addition to a reckoning running from the parinirvāṇa, the death, of Buddha, there was also a reckoning running from his nirvāṇa as denoting some other occurrence in his career.

page 658 note 1 For this detail, see text, 73/100; trans., 37. And compare text, 249/151 ; trans., 108; where we are told that, seeking after merit, at the age of twenty-nine he went forth as a wandering ascetic, and that he wandered:—vassāni paññāsa samādhikāni ; “ for fifty years and somewhat more.”

With this last expression, compare the same phrase, but in another connexion, in the Jātaka, ed. Fausböll, 2. 383. There, the commentary (after perhaps suggesting, according to one manuscript, sama, for samā, + adhikāni) distinctly explains the expression by atirēka-paññāsa-vassāni. From that we can see that samādhika, in both places, is not samā + adhika, ‘ increased by a year,’—(giving “ fifty years and one year more ”),— but is samadhika, ‘ possessed of something more,’ with the short a of the antepenultimate syllable lengthened for the sake of the metre. And, in fact, in the passage in the Jātaka we have the various reading samadhikāni.

The long life thus attributed to Buddha is somewhat remarkable in the case of a Hindū. But, if it were an imaginative detail, the figure would almost certainly have been fixed at eighty-four or eighty-two, on the analogy of something referred to further on, under the Divyāvadāna.

The actual cause of the death of Buddha was, coupled with extreme old age, an attack of dysentery induced by a meal of sūkara-maddava (text, 231/127). This has been rendered by “ dried boar's flesh ” (trans., 71), and elsewhere, not very kindly, by “ pork.” Having regard to mṛidu, ‘ soft, delicate, tender,’ as the origin of mārdava, maddava, I would suggest “ the succulent parts, titbits, of a young wild boar.”

page 659 note 1 The words (text, 239/137) are:—Tēna khō pana samayēna yamaka-sālā sabba-phāliphullā honti akāla-pupphēhi.

The month is not specified. And there were two views on this point. Buddhaghōsha says, in the introduction to his Samantapāsādikā (Vinayapiṭaka, ed. Oldenberg, 3. 283), that Buddha became parinibbuta, i.e. died, on the fullmoon day of the month Visākha, = Vaiśākha. Hiuen Tsiang has said (Julien, Mémoires, 1. 334; Beal, Records, 2. 33; Watters, On Yuan Chwang, 2. 28) that, according to the ancient historical documents, Buddha entered into nirvāṇa, at the age of eighty, on the fifteenth day of the second half— [meaning apparently the full-moon day]— of the month Vaiśākha, but that, according to the school of the Sarvāstivādins, he entered into nirvāṇa on the eighth day of the second half of Kārttika.

We need not speculate about the rival claims. But the following remarks may be made.

From Roxburgh's Plants of the Coast of Coromandel (1819), 3. 9, and plate 212, and Drury's Useful Plants of India (1858), 405, I gather the following information about the Sāla-tree. It has two botanical names, Vatica robusta and Shorea robusta ; the latter having been given to it by Roxburgh in honour of Sir John Shore, Bart. (Lord Teignmouth), who was Governor-General of India, 1793–98. It is a native of the southern skirts of the Himālayas, and is a timbertree which is second in value to only the teak. It grows with a straight majestic trunk, of great thickness, to a height of from 100 to 150 feet, and gives beams which are sometimes 2 feet square and 30 feet or more in length. And it yields also large quantities of resin, the best pieces of which are frequently used, instead of the common incense, in Indian temples. It flowers in the hot season (Roxburgh), in March–April (Drury), with numerous five-petalled pale yellow flowers about three-quarters of an inch in breadth. And the seed, which has a very strong but brief vitality, ripens (by the maturing of the fruit) about three months after the opening of the blossoms. The flowers, of course, begin to fall when the fruit is becoming set. Roxburgh's plate exhibits well both the flowers and the fruit.

Now, it is somewhat difficult to compare the Indian months, whether solar or lunar, with the English months: because (1), owing to the precession of the equinoxes being not taken into consideration in determining the calendar, the Indian months are always travelling slowly forward through the tropical year; and (2), owing to the system of intercalary months, the initial days of the Indian lunar months are always receding by about eleven days for one or two years, and then leaping forwards by about nineteen days. But, in the present time, the full-moon of Vaiśākha falls on any day ranging from about 27 April to 25 May, new style. In the time of Buddhaghōsha, it ranged from about 2 to 30 April, old style. At the time of the death of Buddha, it ranged from about 25 March to 22 April, old style. The specified day in the month Kārttika comes, of course, close upon six months later.

The tradition about the month Vaiśākha in connexion with the death of Buddha may thus be based on some exceptionally early season, when the Sālatrees had burst into blossom an appreciable time before the commencement of the hot weather. On the other hand, it might quite possibly be founded on only some poetical description of the death of Buddha, containing a play on the word viśākha in the two senses of ‘ branched, forked,’ and of ‘ branchless’ in the way of all the branches being hidden by masses of flowers.

page 660 note 1 Here the question arises: how was the corpse of Buddha preserved from hopeless decomposition during the time that elapsed ?

I would suggest that the mention of the perfumes and the woven cloths (dussa, = Skt. dūrśa) may indicate that recourse was had to some process of embalming and swathing. And, in fact, (see trans., introd., 39 f.), Robert Knox, in his Historical Relation of Ceylan, part 3, chapter 11, in describing the arrangements for cremation, has expressly mentioned disembowelling and embalming in cases where the corpse of a person of quality is not cremated speedily.

page 661 note 1 A very special honour was conferred on the corpse of Buddha by this treatment; for (as the translator has indicated, 125, note), to carry into the city, in any ordinary case, the corpse of a person who had died outside it, would have polluted the city.

In a similar manner, the corpse of Mahinda was carried into the city Anurādhapura by the eastern gate, and through the midst of the city, and then out again on the south ; see Dīpavaṁsa, 17. 102, 103.

page 661 note 2 See note on page 160 above.

page 661 note 3 He was, in fact, repeating instructions which had been given to him by Buddha; see text, 242/141; trans., 92.

page 661 note 4 The text here is:— ayasāya tēla-doṇiyā pakkhipitvā aññissā ayasāya dōṇiyā paṭikujjitvā.

For following the translator in rendering the apparently somewhat rare word paṭikujjetvā, paṭikujjitvā— (it is not given in Childers' Pāli Dictionary; but the translator has given us, p. 93, note 1, two other references for it, in the Jātaka, 1. 50, 69)—by “ having covered,” I find another authority in the Thēragāthā, verse 681:—“ A puffed up, flighty friar, resorting to evil friends, sinks down with them in a great torrent,— ummiyā paṭikujjitō, covered, turned over, overwhelmed, by a wave.” And it appears that we have in Sanskṛit nikubjana in the sense of ‘ upsetting, turning over.’ So also Childers has given us, in Pāli, nikujjita, with the variant nikkujjita, in the sense of ‘ overturned, upside down,’ and nikkujjana, ‘ reversal, upsetting.’

As regards the word ayasa, I suppose that it does represent the Sanskṛit āyasa, from ayas, ‘ iron;’ in fact, it is difficult to see how it can be anything else. As to its meaning, Buddhaghōsha's assertion (see trans., 92, note 4) that āyasa (as he has it) was here used in the sense of ‘ gold, golden,’ can hardly be accepted; but his comment is of use in indicating that he was not quite satisfied that the troughs were made of iron: he may have thought that, whereas iron troughs could not be burnt up or even melted, golden troughs might at least be melted.

In following the understanding, when I previously had this passage under observation (note on page 160 above), that the troughs were made of iron, I felt the following difficulty:— The two iron troughs themselves cannot have been consumed; and how could any fire from the outside reach what was inside them?: and, even if the contents of the lower trough were set on fire before the covering trough was placed over it, still, how could they continue to burn without free access of air ? But I did not then see any way out of the difficulty. It has been since then suggested to me that perhaps the troughs were made red-hot, and the corpse of Buddha was baked, not burnt; but there could hardly be accomplished in that way the complete destruction of everything except the bones.

If, however, it was really intended to mark the troughs as made of iron, why were two separate words used— (at any rate where dōṇi is not in composition with tēla),— instead of the compound ayō-dōṇi, just as we have in Sanskṛit ayō-drōṇī, ‘ an iron trough’ ?; in such a trough, we are told (Divyāvadāna, 377), there was pounded to death, along with her child, a lady of the harem who had given offence to Aśōka. Further, āyasa is distinctly used to mean, not ‘made of iron,’ but ‘ of the colour of iron,’ in the Mahābhārata, 5. 1709; there Sanatsujāta tells Dhṛitarāshṭra that brahman, the self-existing impersonal spirit, may appear as either white, or red, or black, or iron-coloured (āyasa), or sun-coloured. And Robert Knox (loc. cit.; see note on page 660 above) has mentioned a custom of placing the corpse of a person of quality, for cremation, inside a tree cut down and hollowed out like a hog-trough.

In these circumstances, I now take the text as indicating wooden troughs, which, naturally or as the result of being painted, were of the colour of iron; adding that an oil-trough seems to have been used as the lower receptacle because, being saturated with oil, it would be very inflammable. But, to make sure of understanding the whole passage correctly, we require to find a detailed description of the cremation of the corpse of a Chakkavatti.

page 663 note 1 A non-Buddhist religious mendicant; probably a worshipper of Vishṇu (see, e.g., IA, 20. 361 f.).

page 663 note 1 The word is sappi, ‘ ghee, clarified butter;’ not anything meaning ‘ glue ’ as might be thought from the translation.

page 663 note 2 It may be useful to remark here that the tradition seems to have been as follows :— The following bones remained uninjured; the four canine teeth, the two collar-bones, and the uṇhīsa, ushṇīsha, an excrescence from the cranium. The other bones were more or less injured by the fire, and were reduced to fragments, of which the smallest were of the size of a mustard-seed, the mediumsized were of the size of half a grain of rice, and the largest were of the size of half a mugga or kidney-bean.

I take this from Tumour, JASB, 7, 1838. 1013, note. He apparently took it from Buddhaghōsha's commentary.

page 663 note 3 To this apparent act of supererogation, attention has been drawn by the translator (130, note). As, however, Buddha had died and was cremated in their village-domain, the Mallas were entitled to take a part in quenching the funeral fire.

page 663 note 4 Fourteen days elapsed, and apparently no more, from the death of Buddha to the distribution of his relics. The distances over which, during the interval, the news had to travel and the claims to shares of the relics had to be transmitted in return, can hardly be estimated until we can arrive at some definite opinion as to the identification of Kusinārā.

page 664 note 1 The text before this indicates only one messenger from each claimant. It here says :— Kōsinārakā Mallā tē saṁghēe ganē ētad=avochuṁ.

The translator has said:—“ The Mallas of Kusinārā spoke to the assembled brethren.” But I do not find any reason for rendering the words tē saṁghē gaṇē by “ the assembled brethren.”

We need not exactly go as far as Buddhaghōsha does, in asserting that each claimant took the precaution, in case of a refusal, of following his messenger in person, with an army. We may, however, surmise that each messenger was, not merely a runner bearing a verbal demand or a letter, but a duly accredited onvoy, of some rank, provided with an armed escort.

page 664 note 2 See note on page 160 above. One of the manuscripts used for the text in the Dīgha-Nikāya gives, instead of kumbha, both here and twice below, tumbha. This latter word is explained in Childers' Pāli Dictionary as meaning ‘ a sort of water vessel with a spout.’

Page 665 note 1 Here, and in two other cases, I have not been able to determine whether mention is made of a place or of a territory.

Page 665 note 2 Both here, and in the passage about the messengers, the Mallas of Pāvā stand last among the seven outside claimants who obtained shares of the corporeal relics. Of course, someone or other was bound to be mentioned last. But Buddhaghōsha, taking things very literally, has made a comment to the following purport:— Considering that Pāvā was only three gāvutas from Kusinārā, and that Buddha had halted there on his way to Kusinārā, how was it that the Mallas of Pāvā did not arrive first of all ? Because they were princes who went about with a great retinue, and the assembling of their retinue delayed them.

He has apparently not offered any explanation of a really practical point; namely, why the messenger of the Mōriyas of Pipphalivana did not arrive in time to obtain a share of the corporeal relics for them.

Page 665 note 3 Buddhaghōsha says, in his commentary, that this sentence:— ēvaṁ ētaṁ bhūta-pubbaṁ, was established by those people who made the third Saṁgīti (who held the third “ Council ”). Of course, from his point of view, which was that the Sutta was written at the time of the events narrated in it.

But the sentence is, in reality, the natural, artistic complement of the opening words of the Sutta:— Ēvaṁ mē sutaṁ; “ thus have I heard!”

Page 666 note 1 The word dōṇa, drōṇa, has sometimes been translated by ‘ bushel.’ But, even if there is an approximation between the two measures, there are difficulties in the way of employing European words as exact equivalents of Indian technical terms ; see, for instance, a note on the rendering of one of Hiuen Tsiang's statements further on.

Page 666 note 2 This statement seems calculated to locate Rāmagāma outside the limits of Jambudīpa; unless we may place it, with the usual abodes of the Nāgas, below the earth.

Page 666 note 3 For a statement of belief, apparently not very early, regarding the localities of deposit of various personal relics of Buddha, see the Buddhavaṁsa, ed. Morris, section 28.

According to that work, the alms-bowl, staff, and robe of Buddha were at Vajirā. And in this place we recognize the origin of the name of the Vājiriyā, the members of one of the schismatic Buddhist schools which arose after the second century after the death of Buddha; see the Mahāvaṁsa, Turnour, p. 21, as corrected by Wijesinha, p. 15.

Amongst the Jains, there was a sect the name of which we have, in epigraphic records, in the Prākrit or mixed-dialect forms of Vaïrā Śākhā (El, 1. 385, No. 7; 392, No. 22; 2. 204, No. 20; 321) ; Vērā or Vairā Śākhā (El, 2. 203, No. 18); Vairi Śākhā (VOR, 1. 174); Ārya-Vēri Śākhā (El, 2. 202, No. 15); and the Śākhā of the Arya-Vēriyas (EI, 1. 386, No. 8): and, in literature, in the Prākṛit forms of Vairī or Vayarī, and Ajja-Vairā Śākhā (Kalpasūtra, ed. Jacobi, 82), with the concomitant mention, evidently as the alleged founder of it, of a teacher named Ajja-Vaira, Vayara, or Vēra (id., 78, 82). May we not find the origin of the name of this sect in the same place-name, rather than in a teacher Vajra, in connexion with whom the sect is mentioned, by a Sanskṛit name, as the Vajra-śakhā (EI, 2. 51, verse 5)?

Page 666 note 4 According to his text, as I have it, he does not say that they were “ added by Theras in Ceylon ” (trans., 135, note).

Page 668 note 1 Compare the story about the founding of Rājagṛiha which we shall meet with further on, under Hiuen Tsiang.

Page 668 note 2 From the use of the particle vā, ‘ or,’ three times, the meaning seems clearly to be that only one of the three dangers should actually happen to the city.

For the danger from fire, compare the story about Girivraja, under Hiuen Tsiang.

Page 669 note 1 See McCrindle in IA, 6. 131, and Ancient India, 42 f.

Page 669 note 2 Julien, Mémoires, 1. 414; Beal, Records, 2. 85; Watters, On Yuan Chwang, 2. 88.

As a matter of fact, not even Kālāśōka the Śaiśunāga was a great-grandson of Bimbisāra. But this point is not a material one.

Except perhaps in the passage mentioned just above, from the account given by Hiuen Tsiang under Rājagṛiha, where Julien has left the point undetermined, and except in the present passage, Hiuen Tsiang has, in the passages which I am using on this occasion, denoted his Aśōka by the Chinese translation of the name, meaning (like the Indian name itself) ‘ sorrowless,’ which has been transcribed by Julien as Wou-yeou, by Beal as Wu-yau, and by Watters as A-yü. It was A-yü who visited Rāmagrāma, and who opened the Stūpas at Vaiśālī and Rājagṛiha and that in the Chan-chu kingdom over the earthen jar.

Here, however, Hiuen Tsiang has denoted his Aśōka by the Chinese transliteration of the name, which has been transcribed by Julien as 'O-chou-kia, by Beal as 'O-shu-kia, and by Watters as A-shu-ka.

This detail is noteworthy: because Hiuen Tsiang has said in the immediately preceding sentence that it was A-yü who made the “ hell ” at Pāṭtaliputra ; and, even closely after introducing the name A-shu-ka here, he has reverted to the other, and has said again that A-yü made the “ hell ” (Julien, ibid.) and that A-yü destroyed it (418), and also that it was A-yü who built one, or the first, of the 84,000 Stūpas (417 f.).

For reasons, however, which may be stated on another occasion, it cannot be said for certain from this passage that the king Aśōka who made Pāṭaliputra the capital was, at that place, expressly indicated to Hiuen Tsiang as being not the Aśōka who made the hell, opened the original Stūpas, built 84,000 other ones, etc.

Page 670 note 1 So Buddhaghōsha, in the introduction to his Samantapāsādikā; see the Vinayapiṭtaka, ed. Oldenberg, 3. 321. So also the Mahāvaṁsa, 15, line 7.

Buddhaghōsha has mentioned him as simply Asōka in that place, but as Kālāsōka in passages on pages 293, 320.

Page 670 note 2 The following suggests itself as a point that should be considered in any full inquiry.

Does the appellation of the work really mean, as has been understood, “ the book of the great decease ” ? If so, when did the terms mahābhinikkhamana, ‘ the great going forth from worldly life,” and mahāparinibbāna, ‘ the great decease,’ applied to those events in the case of Buddha as against nikkhamana and parinibbāna in the case of ordinary people, first become established?

Or does the appellation indicate only “ the great(er) book of the decease,” as contrasted with some earlier and smaller work of the same kind?