VIII. BUDDHA’S DEATH.
IX. DIVISION OF BUDDHA’S RELICS.
In the city the inhabitants are few and far between, comprising only the families belonging to the (different) societies of monks.
Going from this to the south-east for twelve yojanas, they came to the place where the Lichchhavis[10] wished to follow Buddha to (the place of) his pari-nirvâṇa, and where, when he would not listen to them and they kept cleaving to him, unwilling to go away, he made to appear a large and deep ditch which they could not cross over, and gave them his alms-bowl, as a pledge of his regard, (thus) sending them back to their families. There a stone pillar was erected with an account of this event engraved upon it.
[1] This was on the night when Śâkyamuni finally left his palace and family to fulfil the course to which he felt that he was called. Chaṇḍaka, in Pâli Channa, was the prince’s charioteer, and in sympathy with him. So also was the white horse Kanthaka (Kanthakanam Aśvarâja), which neighed his delight till the devas heard him. See M. B., pp. 158–161, and Davids’ Manual, pp. 32, 33. According to ‘Buddhist Birth Stories,’ p. 87, the noble horse never returned to the city, but died of grief at being left by his master, to be reborn immediately in the Trayastriṃśas heaven as the deva Kanthaka!
[2] Beal and Giles call this the ‘Ashes’ tope. I also would have preferred to call it so; but the Chinese character is 炭, not 灰. Rémusat has ‘la tour des charbons.’ It was over the place of Buddha’s cremation.
[3] In Pâli Kusinârâ. It got its name from the Kuśa grass (the poa cynosuroides); and its ruins are still extant, near Kusiah, 180 N.W. from Patna; ‘about,’ says Davids, ‘120 miles N.N.E. of Benâres, and 80 miles due east of Kapilavastu.’
[4] The Śâla tree, the Shorea robusta, which yields the famous teak wood.
[5] Confounded, according to Eitel, even by Hsüan-chwang, with the Hiraṇyavatî, which flows past the city on the south.