[442. {445.}1 Utuḷhipupphiya2]

Taking an utuḷhi flower,
I offered it to the Bodhi,
when [that] banyan3 tree had grown large,
in the golden-colored sunlight.4 (1) [4747]

Within the [present] aeon, since
I offered a flower back then,
I’ve come to know no bad rebirth:
that’s the fruit of Bodhi-pūjā. (2) [4748]

My defilements are [now] burnt up;
all [new] existence is destroyed.
Like elephants with broken chains,
I am living without constraint. (3) [4749]

Being in Best Buddha’s presence
was a very good thing for me.
The three knowledges are attained;
[I have] done what the Buddha taught! (4) [4750]

The four analytical modes,
and these eight deliverances,
six special knowledges mastered,
[I have] done what the Buddha taught! (5) [4751]

Thus indeed Venerable Utuḷhipupphiya5 Thera spoke these verses.

The legend of Utuḷhipupphiya6 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. “Utuḷhi-Flower-er.” BJTS reads Uttalipupphiya, “Uttali-Flower-er.”↩

  3. nigrodhe, nigrodha = Sinh. nuga, RD: the banyan or Indian fig-tree, Ficus Indica; Bot. dict.: milky fig tree, Ficus altissima (Urti.) The banyan was the Bodhi tree only of Kassapa Buddha, the twenty-third Buddha of Buddhavaṃsa and third of the five Buddhas of the present “auspicious” or “lucky” (bhadda) aeon (Gotama is the fourth, Maitreya will be the fifth); thus the text inadvertently indicates that this offering was made in the Kassapa Buddha-era.↩

  4. I take haritobhāsa as haritā + obhāsa, but it could also be harita + obhāsa = splendorous pale green, modifying the tree, which seems to be BJTS’ preferred reading (gloss: nil-pähä äti, “having blue color”). I also take the string of locatives as an absolute construction (“when…”) whereas BJTS treats them as straightforward locatives, with the protagonist taking a flower on the banyan tree. BJTS seems to misunderstand nigrodha, glossing it nāgabodhirukṣayehi, “on the ironwood bodhi tree.” Ironwood was the Bodhi tree of four previous Buddhas (Maṅgala, Sumana, Revata and Sobhita) but all of them lived before the present aeon.↩

  5. BJTS reads Uttalipupphiya, “Uttali-Flower-er.”↩

  6. BJTS reads Uttalipupphiya, “Uttali-Flower-er.”↩