(9) See the account of Buddha’s preaching in chapter xviii.
(10) The sentiment of this clause is not easily caught.
(11) See E. M., p. 152:—“Buddha made a law forbidding the monks to commit suicide. He prohibited any one from discoursing on the miseries of life in such a manner as to cause desperation.” See also M. B., pp. 464, 465.
(12) Beal says:—“Evil desire; hatred; ignorance.”
(13) See chap. xx, note 10.
(14) The Anagamin belong to the third degree of Buddhistic saintship, the third class of Aryas, who are no more liable to be reborn as men, but are to be born once more as devas, when they will forthwith become Arhats, and attain to nirvâna. E. H., pp. 8, 9.
(15) Our author expresses no opinion of his own on the act of this bhikshu. Must it not have been a good act, when it was attended, in the very act of performance, by such blessed consequences? But if Buddhism had not something better to show than what appears here, it would not attract the interest which it now does. The bhikshu was evidently rather out of his mind; and the verdict of a coroner’s inquest of this nineteenth century would have pronounced that he killed himself “in a fit of insanity.”
CHAPTER XXXI.
GAYA. SAKYAMUNI’S ATTAINING TO THE BUDDHASHIP; AND OTHER LEGENDS.
From this place, after travelling to the west for four yojanas, (the pilgrims) came to the city of Gaya;(1) but inside the city all was emptiness and desolation. Going on again to the south for twenty le, they arrived at the place where the Bodhisattva for six years practised with himself painful austerities. All around was forest.
Three le west from here they came to the place where, when Buddha had gone into the water to bathe, a deva bent down the branch of a tree, by means of which he succeeded in getting out of the pool.(2)