[477. {480.}1 Pulinacchaṅkamiya2]

In the past, in a forest grove,
I was a man who hunted deer.
Searching after a vāta-deer,3
I saw [the Buddha’s] walkway [there]. (1) [5025]

Happy, with pleasure in my heart,
taking sand in [my] lap-pocket,
I sprinkled [it] on the walkway
of the Well-Gone One, Splendid One.4 (2) [5026]

In the thirty-one aeons since
I sprinkled that sand [at that time],
I’ve come to know no bad rebirth:
that is the fruit of [giving] sand. (3) [5027]

My defilements are [now] burnt up;
all [new] existence is destroyed.
Like elephants with broken chains,
I am living without constraint. (4) [5028]

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! (5) [5029]

The four analytical modes,
and these eight deliverances,
six special knowledges mastered,
[I have] done what the Buddha taught! (6) [5030]

Thus indeed Venerable Pulinacchaṅkamiya Thera spoke these verses.

The legend of Pulinacchaṅkamiya Thera is finished.

The Summary:

Naḷamālī, Maṇidada,
Ukkāsatika, Vījanī,
Kummāsa and Kusaṭṭha [too],
also Giripunnāgiya,
Vallikāra,5 Pānadhida
[and] then Pulīnacchaṅkama:
five and ninety are the verses
that are counted by those who know.

The Naḷamāli Chapter, the Forty-Eighth


  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. “Sand Walkway-er”

  3. lit., “wind-deer,” Śrīsumaṅgala-Śabdakoṣaya, s.v. explains this as “a type of deer with a superabundance of swiftness”

  4. sugatassa sirīmato

  5. PTS reads valliṅkara, I follow BJTS here