Mandārapupphiya1 Chapter, the Thirty-Seventh
[358. {361.}2 Ekamandāriya3]
Coming here from Tāvatiṃsa,
I was a man named Maṅgala.4
Taking a mandārava bloom,
I carried [it] over the head
of Vipassi [Buddha], Great Sage,
seated [then] in meditation.5
I carried it [thus] for a week,
[then] returned to the world of gods. (1-2) [3180-3181]
In the ninety-one aeons since
I did pūjā to the Buddha,
I’ve come to know no bad rebirth:
that’s the fruit of Buddha-pūjā. (3) [3182]
The four analytical modes,
and these eight deliverances,
six special knowledges mastered,
[I have] done what the Buddha taught! (4) [3183]
Thus indeed Venerable Ekamandāriya Thera spoke these verses.
The legend of Ekamandāriya Thera is finished.
BJTS reads Mandārava°, the preferred Pāli spelling.↩
Apadāna numbers provided in {fancy brackets} correspond to the BJTS edition, which contains more individual poems than does the PTS edition dictating the main numbering of this translation.↩
“One Mandāra [Flower]-er.” Mandārava (skt. mandāra) is the coral tree, Erhythrina fulgens (RD Erythmia Indica), also one of the five celestial trees whose flowers fall from the world of the gods. BJTS reads, probably more correctly, Mandāravapupphiya. In this context the reference seems to be to the divine, rather than the earthly mandāra(va), so I leave the term untranslated, rather than give “One Coral Tree [Flower]-er”↩
“Auspicious,” “Festival,” “Lucky,” also the name of a previous Buddha.↩
lit., “with (in) samādhi”↩