[447. {450.}1 Bodhighariya2]
Happy, with pleasure in [my] heart,
I had a Bodhi-tree shrine3 made
for Siddhattha, the Blessed One,
the Biped-Lord, the Neutral One. (1) [4785]
Being reborn in Tusitā,4
I live in a house [made of] gems.
There’s neither cold nor hot for me;
the wind does not touch my body. (2) [4786]
In the fifty-sixth aeon hence
I was a wheel-turning monarch;
my city known as Kāsika,5
constructed by Vissakamma,6
was spread out for ten leagues [in length,]
[and it measured] eight leagues in width.
No[thing] in that city was [made
of]7 sticks [or of] vines [or of] clay. (3-4) [4787-4788]
[My] palace known as Maṅgala,8
constructed by Vissakamma,
[measured] a league across [in length,]
and it was a half a league wide. (5) [4789]
[Its] eighty-four thousand pillars
were [all made out of solid] gold;
the pinnacles were made of gems,
and the roofs were [made of] silver. (6) [4790]
That house all made of [solid] gold,
constructed by Vissakamma,
was occupied by me [back then]:
that’s the fruit of giving a shrine.9 (7) [4791]
After enjoying all of that,
in the world10 of gods [and of] men,
today I have reached nirvana,
the peaceful state that’s unexcelled. (8) [4792]
In the ninety-four aeons since
I had that Bodhi[-tree-]shrine made,
I’ve come to know no bad rebirth:
that’s the fruit of giving a shrine. (9) [4793]
My defilements are [now] burnt up;
all [new] existence is destroyed.
Like elephants with broken chains,
I am living without constraint. (10) [4794]
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! (11) [4795]
The four analytical modes,
and these eight deliverances,
six special knowledges mastered,
[I have] done what the Buddha taught! (12) [4796]
Thus indeed Venerable Bodhighariya Thera spoke these verses.
The legend of Bodhighariya Thera is finished.
The Summary:
Vibhīṭakī,11Kolaphalī,
Billa-Bhallāṭakappada,
Nigrodha12 and Ambāṭakī,
Āsanī, Pādapīṭhaka,
Vedika, Bodhigharika:
the verses that are counted here,
which are declared in this chapter,
all[-told] are one less than eighty.
The Vibhīṭaki Chapter, the Forty-Fifth
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.↩
“Bodhi Tree Shrine-er”↩
bodhigharam, lit., “bodhi [tree] house,” an enclosure surrounding a Bodhi tree which functions both as shrine and as protection for the tree. Siddhattha Buddha’s Bodhi tree was a kaṇikāra, “dinner-plate tree”↩
the heaven of happiness↩
“in the Benares Country”,” cf. Kāsi, Benares, where many of the Jātaka stories are set.↩
Vishwakarma, “the divine architect”↩
I follow BJTS Sinhala gloss in interpolating “thing” as the subject of the half-verse, which otherwise would mean that sticks, vines and clay were themselves absent from (n’atthi, “do not exist”) in that city.↩
“Auspicious” “Festival”↩
lit., “of giving a [Bodhi tree] house”↩
or “state” “existence”: bhave rather than loke↩
BJTS Viṭabhīkī is an obvious typographical error here↩
BJTS reads Uttal’↩