It was by the side of the ‘Weapons laid down’ tope that Buddha, having given up the idea of living longer, said to Ânanda, ‘In three months from this I will attain to pavi-nirvâṇa;’ and king Mâra[9] had so fascinated and stupefied Ânanda, that he was not able to ask Buddha to remain longer in this world.
Three or four le east from this place there is a tope (commemorating the following occurrence):—A hundred years after the pari-nirvâṇa of Buddha, some Bhikshus of Vaiśâlî went wrong in the matter of the disciplinary rules in ten particulars, and appealed for their justification to what they said were the words of Buddha. Hereupon the Arhats and Bhikshus observant of the rules, to the number in all of 700 monks, examined afresh and collated the collection of disciplinary books.[10] Subsequently men built at this place the tope (in question), which is still existing.
[1] It is difficult to tell what was the peculiar form of this vihâra from which it gets its name; something about the construction of its door, or cupboards, or galleries.
[2] See the explanation of this in the next chapter.
[3] Âmbapâlî, Âmrapâlî, or Âmradarikâ, ‘the guardian of the Âmra (probably the mango) tree,’ is famous in Buddhist annals. See the account of her in M. B., pp. 456–8. She was a courtesan. She had been in many narakas or hells, was 100,000 times a female beggar, and 10,000 times a prostitute; but maintaining perfect continence during the period of Kâśyapa Buddha, Śâkyamuni’s predecessor, she had been born a devi, and finally appeared in earth under an Âmra tree in Vaiśâlî. There again she fell into her old ways, and had a son by king Bimbisâra; but she was won over by Buddha to virtue and chastity, renounced the world, and attained to the state of an Ârhat. See the earliest account of Âmbapâlî’s presentation of the garden in ‘Buddhist Suttas,’ pp. 30–33, and the note there from Bishop Bigandet on pp. 33, 34.
[4] Beal gives, ‘In this place I have performed the last religious act of my earthly career;’ Giles, ‘This is the last place I shall visit;’ Rémusat, ‘C’est un lieu où je reviendrai bien longtemps après ceci.’ Perhaps the ‘walk’ to which Buddha referred had been for meditation.
[5] See the account of this legend in the note in M. B., pp. 235, 236, different, but not less absurd. The first part of Fâ-hien’s narrative will have sent the thoughts of some of my readers to the exposure of the infant Moses, as related in Exodus.
[6] See [chap. xiii, note 15].
[7] Thus Śâkyamuni had been one of the thousand little boys who floated in the box in the Ganges. How long back the former age was we cannot tell. I suppose the tope of the two fathers who became Pratyeka Buddhas had been built like the one commemorating the laying down of weapons after Buddha had told his disciples of the strange events in the past.
[8] Bhadra-kalpa, ‘the Kalpa of worthies or sages.’ ‘This,’ says Eitel, p. 22, ‘is a designation for a Kalpa of stability, so called because 1000 Buddhas appear in the course of it. Our present period is a Bhadra-kalpa, and four Buddhas have already appeared. It is to last 236 million years, but over 151 millions have already elapsed.’