[196. Kisalayapūjaka1]
In the city, Dvāravatī,
I had a small flowering tree.2
There was a well there [in that place,]
[whose water] made the trees grow tall.3 (1) [2241]
Siddhattha, the Unconquered One,
made firm by [his] own [mental]4 strength,
showing [his] compassion for me,
traveled in the path of the wind.5 (2) [2242]
I am looking at nothing else,
fixed on worship of the Great Sage.
Seeing an ashoka tree sprout
I threw it up into the sky. (3) [2243]
Those shoots are going backwards
to the Buddha going [in the sky].
That I, seeing that miracle,
[thought], “O! The Buddha’s loftiness!”6 (4) [2244]
In the ninety-four aeons since
I offered [the Buddha] that sprout,
I’ve come to know no bad rebirth:
that’s the fruit of Buddha-pūjā. (5) [2245]
In the twenty-seventh aeon
ago lived one Ekassara,7
a wheel-turning king with great strength,
possessor of the seven gems. (6) [2246]
The four analytical modes,
and these eight deliverances,
six special knowledges mastered,
[I have] done what the Buddha taught! (7) [2247]
Thus indeed Venerable Kisalayapūjaka Thera spoke these verses.
The legend of Kisalayapūjaka Thera is finished.
“Offerer of a Tender Sprout (or Shoot)”↩
lit., “there was a small flowering tree (or shrub) of mine”↩
lit., “making grow up of the trees,” apposite “well”↩
see above, #189, v. 2 (BJTS 2203)↩
BJTS gloss makes clear: out of compassion he demonstrated his Buddha powers by flying through the sky for a moment.↩
reading uḷāratā with BJTS for PTS pūjaka (“offerer”). The latter reading — which is also possible — would mean that his amazement was at the fact that his pūjā resulted in his seeing the miracle, rather than the miracle itself (the iddhi powers of a Buddha).↩
the name means “One Mule,” which seems rather diminutive for a world-conquering monarch. Both PTS and BJTS give alternate reading Ekissaro, “One Lord,” which would seem more appropriate, but both accept Ekassara as the preferred reading based on the manuscript record.↩