North Indian Inscriptions

PART B

place, nothing more specific is said. The offer of Pasenadi, to erect a pavilion for the Buddha is also found here as well as the refusal of the offer by the Buddha with a reference to the expected help of Sakka, but we do not hear anything further about the building of the pavilion. On the other hand it is narrated that the Tīrthikas build a pavilion for themselves and that Sakka destroys it before the miracle takes place. The miracle^[1] consists in the Buddha’s creating a ratanachaṅkama in the air and while walking up and down on it he sends forth flames of fire and streams of water from the different parts of his body. He also makes his double appear before him with whom he exchanges question and answer. Two hundred million living beings are converted by the instruction which he gives in the meantime.

   The Prātihāryasūtra of the Divy. is swollen to a great extent by lengthy repetitions and inserted episodes. I here restrict myself to hint at several points which, as it appears to me, are of importance for the evolution of the legend. The offer of Prasenajit to erect a pavilion for the miracle (prātithāryamaṇḍapa) is here accepted by the Buddha. The pavilion is erected between the town of Śrāvastī and the Jetavana. At the same place the adherents of the six Tirthikas build a pavilion for every one of them.

   The miracle of the mango has here totally disappeared from the narrative, not, however, the person of the gardener Gaṇḍaka, whose former history on the contrary is told at great length. His real name is Kāla and he is the brother of Prasenajit. His hands and feet were cut off by the king’s command on account of an alleged offence in the harem, but by the order of the Buddha his body was restored by Ānanda with the help of satyakriyā, and he had become a follower of the Buddha since that time. Now he has attained the anāgāmiphala and is in possession of supernatural powers. On account of that he is able to fetch a Karṇikāra tree from the Uttarakaurava-dvīpa which he plants in front of the pavilion of the Buddha, whereas another gardener (ārāmaka), named Ratnaka or Rambhaka, who apparently enjoys similar powers, plants an Aśoka tree from the Gandhamādana behind the pavilion.

   After a number of smaller miracles the Buddha, asked by Prasenajit, first performs the wonder of fire and water, afterwards, being asked a second time by the king in the presence of all gods, he shows a miracle by multiplying his appearance which extends in a chain up to the highest of the Rūpabrahma worlds. Pañchika, the general of the Yakshas, destroys the pavilion of the Tīrthikas by a storm. At the end, the Buddha creates another representation of a Buddha with whom he holds conversation and preaches the Dharma so that many hundreds of thousands attain the different stages of holiness.

   In the Buddhach. the miracle is treated very shortly in two stanzas. It is only said that the Buddha, when he dwells in Śrāvastī, accepts the demand of the Tirthikas to show his miraculous strength and defeats them by his manifold magic powers. Probably Aśvaghosha restricted himself here, because he had already narrated the performance of the miracles in details before in the story of Buddha’s stay in Kapilavastu (19, 12-15). Here the wonder of fire and water, as well as that of multiplication is mentioned but mixed with all sorts of other miracles: the Buddha touches the carriage of the sun with his hand, goes on the path of the wind, dives into the earth as if it were water, walks on the surface of the water as on land and goes through a rock.

   The comparison shows that the Pāli-version of the legend, even if it was fixed later, is on the whole undoubtedly the older one regarding the contents. The wonderful creation of the Gaṇḍamba tree must have once formed the beginning of the story. The appearance
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^[1]The description has been taken pālito i.e. from Paṭisambhidāmagga I, 125 f.