[373. {376.}1 Gandhamuṭṭhiya2]

When a stupa3 was being built,
various perfumes4 were gathered.
Happy, with pleasure in [my] heart,
I gave5 a handful of incense. (1) [3252]

In the hundred thousand aeons
since I worshipped6 that stupa [then,]
I’ve come to know no bad rebirth:
that’s the fruit of stupa-pūjā. (2) [3253]

My being in Buddha’s presence7
was a very good thing for me.
The three knowledges are attained;
[I have] done what the Buddha taught! (3) [3254]

My defilements are [now] burnt up;
all [new] existence is destroyed.
Like elephants with broken chains,
I am living without constraint. (4) [3255]

The four analytical modes,
and these eight deliverances,
six special knowledges mastered,
[I have] done what the Buddha taught! (5) [3256]

Thus indeed Venerable Gandhamuṭṭhiya Thera spoke these verses.

The legend of Gandhamuṭṭhiya Thera is finished.

  1. 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.↩

  2. “A Handful of Incense-er”↩

  3. or more generally, “shrine,” cchita. I read cchitake karīyamāne (locative absolute construction) with BJTS for PTS cchitesu kiramānesu, “when stupas (or shrines) were being scattered”↩

  4. gandha, lit., “[good] smells,” “types of incense”↩

  5. lit., “did pūjā”↩

  6. lit., “did pūjā”↩

  7. this slight deviation on the first verse of the standard refrain — reading mama buddhassa for the more common buddhaseṭṭhassa (“Best Buddha’s”) — appears to be quite random. Here, PTS has the variant but BJTS reads buddhaseṭṭhassa; elsewhere, BJTS also presents the variant. I have tried to keep these straight and to mark the variant when it occurs — likewise other small variants on the second verse of the refrain, but may have missed some, as it’s all-too-easy to just assume the default reading without looking closely, exacerbated by the PTS tendency to substitute “pe” (“etc.”) for the full verses of the refrain. This may account for the randomness of the variant readings in the manuscripts themselves, as the scribes no doubt experienced similar failures to detect the distinctions in these verses, which appear in nearly every apadāna↩