Going on south-east from the city of Śrâvastî for twelve yojanas, (the travellers) came to a town named Na-pei-keâ1, the birthplace of Krakuchanda Buddha 2. At the place where he and his father met, and at that where he attained to pari-nirvâņa, topes were erected. Going north from here less than a yojana, they came to a town which had been the birthplace of Kanakamuni Buddha 2. At the place where he and his father met, and where he attained to pari-nirvâņa, topes were erected.

CHAPTER XXII.

KAPILAVASTU. ITS DESOLATION. LEGENDS OF BUDDHA'S BIRTH, ¦ AND OTHER INCIDENTS IN CONNEXION WITH IT.

LESS than a yojana to the east from this brought them to the city of Kapilavastu ; but in it there was neither king nor people. All was mound and desolation. Of inhabitants there were only some monks and a score or two of families of the common people. At the spot where stood the old palace of king Śuddhodana* there have been made

concludes his account of the Kâśyapa Buddha (M. B., p. 97) with the following sentence: After his body was burnt, the bones still remained in their usual position, presenting the appearance of a perfect skeleton; and the whole of the inhabitants of Jambudvîpa, assembling, together, erected a dagoba over his relics one yojana in height!'

1 Na-pei-keâ or Nabhiga is not mentioned elsewhere. Eitel says this Buddha was born at the city of Gân-ho (), and Hardy gives his birthplace as Mekhala. It may be possible, by means of Sanskrit, to reconcile these

statements.

2 See note 2, p. 51.

Kapilavastu, 'the city of beautiful virtue,' was the birthplace of Śâkyamuni, but was destroyed, as intimated in the notes on last chapter, during his lifetime. It was situated a short distance north-west of the present Goruckpoor, lat. 26° 46′ N., lon. 83° 19′ E. Davids says (Manual, p. 25), 'It was on the banks of the river Rohini, the modern Kohana, about 100 miles north-west of the city of Benâres.'

The father, or supposed father, of Śâkyamuni. He is here called 'the king white and pure' (E). A more common appellation is 'the king of pure

images of the prince (his eldest son) and his mother1; and at the places where that son appeared mounted on a white elephant when he entered his mother's womb 2, and where he turned his carriage round on seeing the sick man after he had gone out of the city by the eastern gate3, topes have been erected. The places (were also pointed out) where (the ṛishi) Â-e inspected the marks (of Buddhaship on the body) of the heirapparent (when an infant); where, when he was in company with Nanda and others, on the elephant being struck down and drawn on one side, he tossed it away 7; where he shot an arrow to the south-east, and it

5

6

rice();' but the character, or 'rice,' must be a mistake for, 'Brahman,' and the appellation='Pure Brahman king.'

1 The eldest son' or 'prince' was Śâkyamuni, and his mother had no other son. For 'his mother,' see note 2, page 48. She was a daughter of Añjana or Anuśâkya, king of the neighbouring country of Koli, and Yasodharâ, an aunt of Śuddhodana. There appear to have been various intermarriages between the royal houses of Kapila and Koli.

2 In 'The Life of the Buddha,' p. 15, we read that 'Buddha was now in the Tushita heaven, and knowing that his time was come (the time for his last rebirth in the course of which he would become Buddha), he made the necessary examinations; and having decided that Mahâ-mâyâ was the right mother, in the midnight watch he entered her womb under the appearance of an elephant.' See M. B., pp. 140-143, and, still better, Rhys Davids' 'Birth Stories,' pp. 58-63.

3 In Hardy's M. B., pp. 154, 155, we read, 'As the prince (Siddhârtha, the first name given to Śâkyamuni; see Eitel, under Sarvârthasiddha) was one day passing along, he saw a deva under the appearance of a leper, full of sores, with a body like a water-vessel, and legs like the pestle for pounding rice; and when he learned from his charioteer what it was that he saw, he became agitated, and returned at once to the palace.' See also Rhys Davids' 'Buddhism,' p. 29.

This is an addition of my own, instead of 'There are also topes erected at the following spots' of former translators. Fâ-hien does not say there were memorial topes at all these places.

Asita; see Eitel, p. 15. He is called in Pâli Kalâ Devala, and had been a minister of Suddhodana's father.

• See note 2, page 39.

7 In 'The Life of the Buddha' we read that the Lichchhavis of Vaiśâlî had sent to the young prince a very fine elephant; but when it was near Kapilavastu, Devadatta,

k

went a distance of thirty le, then entering the ground and making a spring to come forth, which men subsequently fashioned into a well from which travellers might drink1; where, after he had attained to Wisdom, Buddha returned and saw the king, his father 3; where five hundred Śâkyas quitted their families and did reverence to Upâli1 while the earth shook and moved in six different ways; where Buddha preached his Law to the devas, and the four deva kings and others kept the four doors (of the hall), so that (even) the king, his father, could not enter 5; where Buddha sat under a nyagrodha tree, which is still standing, with his face to the east, and (his aunt) Mahâ-prajâpatî presented him with a

out of envy, killed it with a blow of his fist. Nanda (not Ânanda, but a half-brother of Siddhartha), coming that way, saw the carcase lying on the road, and pulled it on one side; but the Bodhisattva, seeing it there, took it by the tail, and tossed it over seven fences and ditches, when the force of its fall made a great ditch. I suspect that the characters in the column have been disarranged, and that we should

read撲捐象處射箭,云云. Buddha, that is Siddhârtha, was at this time only ten years old.

1 The young Śâkyas were shooting when the prince thus surpassed them all.

He was then seventeen.

2 See note 2, page 61.

This was not the night when he finally fled from Kapilavastu, and as he was leaving the palace, perceived his sleeping father, and said, 'Father, though I love thee, yet a fear possesses me, and I may not stay;'—The Life of the Buddha, p. 25. Most probably it was that related in M. B., pp. 199–204. See 'Buddhist Birth Stories,' pp. 120-127.

They did this, I suppose, to show their humility, for Upâli was only a Śûdra by birth, and had been a barber; so from the first did Buddhism assert its superiority to the conditions of rank and caste. Upâli was distinguished by his knowledge of the rules of discipline, and praised on that account by Buddha. He was one of the three leaders of the first synod, and the principal compiler of the original Vinaya books.

5 I have not met with the particulars of this preaching.

Meaning, as explained in Chinese, 'a tree without knots;' the ficus Indica. See Rhys Davids' note, Manual, p. 39, where he says that a branch of one of these trees was taken from Buddha Gayâ to Anuradhapura in Ceylon in the middle of the third century B. C., and is still growing there, the oldest historical tree in the world.