The weight of the bell is generally added to the dedication.
There is a fine Burmese bell in the Indian section of the South Kensington Museum. It has a long Pāli inscription, a portion of the translation of which I here give:—
‘Without charity you cannot attain to Nirvāṇa’—so it is written in the Pāli Texts.
I, the giver of this bell, was staying in the sweet-smelling town of Ma-oo—of which I collect the taxes for the king—and with me was my wife—my life’s breath—like to the pollen of a lily, from whom I will not be separated in all the existences which are to come, and out of which we hope soon to escape. We adore Buddha, that we may embark in the golden raft of the Noble Path, which will lead us to the final plunge into Nirvāṇa. We two, brother and sister (that is, husband and wife), have given this bell as an offering. The exact weight of the bell is 2500 kyats. We took our own weight in gold and silver and bright copper and other metal, and mixed them well together, in the year 1209 (1847 A.D.).
Now I will record all the alms I gave and what I erected within the sacred enclosure. I gave a sacred flag-staff (see [p. 380] of these Lectures), the price of which, with all expenses in putting up, was 500 rupees. At the foot of it I built four small pagodas. Outside I built a monastery and a rest-house. Such are all the offerings. May I be freed from the Four states of Punishment, from the Three Great Calamities (war, famine, and plague), from the Eight Evil Places, from the Five Enemies, from unfortunate times and seasons, and from bad people. May I escape all these when I die.
All the merits I have gained, may they be shared with my parents, teachers, and all my relations; with kings, queens, nobles, and all people in the thirty-one places of habitation throughout the universe. (See [p. 121] of these Lectures.)
Under the head of miscellaneous objects, we may note the seven precious minerals or substances to which allusion has frequently been made. They are gold, silver, pearl, sapphire or ruby, cat’s eye, diamond, and coral (Childers); but they vary, and some authorities substitute lapis lazuli for pearl. In Hindūism there are nine precious substances (nava-ratna).
We may also enumerate here the seven treasures belonging to every universal monarch. These are:—1. a wheel which, being set in motion by the monarch, rolls before him to establish the Law in his dominions; 2. an elephant; 3. a flying horse (see [p. 523]); 4. a jewel which on the darkest night illuminates the earth for seven miles round ([p. 381]); 5. a good queen or wife; 6. a good minister or servant, who has the power of discovering hidden treasures; 7. a good general (compare Alabaster’s ‘Wheel of the Law,’ p. 81).
Supplementary Remarks on the Connexion of Buddhism with Jainism[276].
Having during the progress of the foregoing Lectures, incidentally mentioned the subject of Jainism, I ought not to conclude them without explaining some of the chief points of difference between the system of the Jainas (conveniently contracted into Jains) and that of the Buddhists. The Jains in India, according to their own reckoning, number 1,222,000; but this is incorrect, for by the last Census they only number half a million. A great authority (Sir William Wilson Hunter) confirms this. (See his ‘Gazetteer’ and ‘Indian Empire.’)
Most scholars in the present day are of opinion that the Jaina Teacher Vardhamāna Mahā-vīra (Nātaputta) and Gautama Buddha were contemporaries, and that Jains were an independent sceptical sect, probably a little antecedent to the Buddhists, and were their rivals. At any rate it seems certain that the Nigaṇṭhas[277] or Dig-ambara Jains, that is, a sect of naked ascetics, existed before the Buddha’s time, and that the Tripiṭaka alludes to them.
Probably Vardhamāna Mahā-vīra (usually called Mahā-vīra) was merely a reformer of a system previously founded by a teacher named Pārṡva-nātha. Not much is known of the latter, though he is greatly honoured by the Jains. His images are ‘serpent-canopied’ like those of Buddha ([p. 480]). His pupils are called Pāsāvaććijja (for Pārṡvāpatyīya, ‘belonging to the descendants of Pārṡva’). They were only bound by four vows, whereas Mahā-vīra’s teaching imposed five vows.
We have seen that Gautama Buddha, in the fifth century B.C., came to the conclusion that bodily austerities were useless as a means of obtaining liberation. His main idea seems to have been that liberation from the painful cycle of continued re-births, that is, from Saṃsāra, was to be obtained by means of knowledge (Bodhi), evolved out of the inner consciousness through meditation (dhyāna) and intuition; whereas, in contradistinction to this Buddhist idea, the main idea of the Jain teacher Mahā-vīra seems to have been that liberation was to be obtained through subjugation of the passions and through mortification of the body (tapas). The term Jina, ‘conqueror,’ is used in both systems, but Gautama Buddha was a Jina or conqueror through profound abstract meditation, whereas Mahā-vīra was a Jina through severe bodily austerity.