[493. {496.}1 Ghatamaṇḍadāyaka2]

Seeing the Blessed One, Well-Thought,3
the World’s Best One, the Bull of Men,
entered into the great forest,
tormented by internal pain,4
bringing pleasure to [my own] heart,
I presented cream from some ghee.5 (1) [5289]6

From doing and heaping [that] up,7
the river [named] Bhāgīrathī,8
[and] even the four great oceans
are supplying [ghee-]cream to me. (2) [5290]

And even this [whole] awful earth,
beyond measure, beyond counting,
discerning what I am thinking,
turns into honey and sugar.9 (3) [5291]

These trees on [all] four continents,
foot-drinkers growing in the earth,10
discerning what I am thinking,
turn into11 wishing-trees [for me]. (4) [5292]

Fifty times the lord of the gods,
I exercised divine rule [there].
And fifty-one times I was [then]
a king who turns the wheel [of law].
[And I enjoyed] much local rule,
innumerable by counting. (5) [5293]12

In the ninety-four aeons since
I gave [him] that gift at that time,
I’ve come to know no bad rebirth:
that’s the fruit of the cream from ghee. (6) [5294]

My defilements are [now] burnt up;
all [new] existence is destroyed.
Like elephants with broken chains,
I am living without constraint. (7) [5295]

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! (8) [5296]

The four analytical modes,
and these eight deliverances,
six special knowledges mastered,
[I have] done what the Buddha taught! (9) [5297]

Thus indeed Venerable Ghatamaṇḍadāyaka Thera spoke these verses.

The legend of Ghatamaṇḍadāyaka 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. “Cream-of-Ghee Donor.” This apadāna is included verbatim above, with the same name, as #423 {426}.↩

  3. succhintitaŋ↩

  4. vātābādhena, “a disease of the wind,” one of the three humors in classical Indian (including Buddhist) medical traditions.↩

  5. ghata (cream, scum) + maṇḍa (clarified butter, ghee), i.e., the best part of the ghee, the purest oil skimmed off the top of a pot of ghee.↩

  6. PTS and BJTS agree in presenting this as a six-footed verse.↩

  7. katattā ācchitattā ccha, lit., “because of the doing, and because of the heaping up [of that karma]”↩

  8. this is the BJTS spelling; PTS gives Bhāgīrasī↩

  9. bhavate madhusakkarā↩

  10. this foot consists of two different words for” tree”: dharaṇī-rūha (“growing in the earth”) and pādapa (“drinking from the feet [or roots]”). Though awkward in English, I translate literally here rather than give the non-descriptive “tree, which was a tree”.↩

  11. bhavanti, become↩

  12. PTS and BJTS agree in presenting this as a six-footed verse.↩