[171] The names are given in the text; the four Mahārājas, Sakka, Suyāma, Santusita, Paranimitta-vasavatti, and Mahā-Brahma. They are the archangels in the different heavenly seats in each world-system (Cakkavāla) of the Buddhist cosmogony.
[172] In the seas surrounding each continent (Mahādīpa) there are five hundred islands. See Hardy’s Manual of Buddhism, p. 13.
[173] Majjhima-desa, of which the commentator adds, “This is the country thus spoken of in the Vinaya,” quoting the passage at Mahāvagga, v. 13, 12, which gives the boundaries as follows: “To the E. the town Kajaŋgala, and beyond it Mahāsālā; to the S.E. the river Salalavatī; to the S. the town Setakaṇṇika; to the W. the brāhman town and district Thūṇa; and to the N. the Usīraddhaja Mountain.” These are different from the boundaries of the Madhya Desa of later Brahminical literature, on which see Lassen’s ‘Indische Alterthumskunde,’ vol. i. p. 119 (2nd edition). This sacred land was regarded as the centre of Jambudvīpa; that is, of the then known world—just as the Chinese talk of China as the Middle Country, and as other people have looked on their own capital as the navel or centre of the world, and on their world as the centre of the universe.
[174] It is instructive to notice that in later accounts it is soberly related as actual fact that the Bodisat entered his mother’s womb as a white elephant: and the Incarnation scene is occasionally so represented in Buddhist sculptures.
[175] I think this is the meaning of the passage, though Prof. Childers has a different rendering of the similar phrase at verse 104, where I would read “it” instead of “vegetation.” Compare Dāṭhāvaŋsa, i. 45.
[176] I once saw a notice of some mediæval frescoes in which the Holy Child was similarly represented as visible within the Virgin’s womb, but have unfortunately mislaid the reference.
[177] The Madurattha Vilāsinī adds the rest, “I am supreme in the world; this is my last birth; henceforth there will be no rebirth for me.”
[178] There is some mistake here, as the list contains nine—or if the four treasures count as one, only six—Connatal Ones. I think before Kaḷudāyi we should insert Ānanda, the loving disciple. So Alabaster and Hardy (Wheel of the Law, p. 106; Manual of Buddhism, p. 146). Bigandet also adds Ānanda, but calls him the son of Amittodana, which is against the common tradition (Life or Legend of Guadama, p. 36, comp. my Buddhism, p. 52). The legend is certainly, as to its main features, an early one, for it is also found, in greatly exaggerated and contradictory terms, in the books of Northern Buddhists (Lalita Vistara, Foucaux, p. 97, Beal, p. 53, comp. Senart, p. 294).
[179] Samāpatti.
[180] Dhammacakkaŋ pavattessati. See my “Buddhism,” p. 45.