[500. {503.}1 Kāsumāriphaladāyaka2]

I saw the Buddha, Stainless One,
the World’s Best One, the Bull of Men,
sitting down on a mountainside,
shining like a dinner-plate tree.3 (1) [5408]

Happy, with pleasure in [my] heart,
hands pressed together on [my] head,
gathering kāsumāri4 fruit,
I gave [it] to the Best Buddha. (2) [5409]

In the thirty-one aeons since
I gave that fruit [to the Buddha],
I’ve come to know no bad rebirth:
that is the fruit of giving fruit. (3) [5410]

My defilements are [now] burnt up;
all [new] existence is destroyed.
Like elephants with broken chains,
I am living without constraint. (4) [5411]

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) [5412]

The four analytical modes,
and these eight deliverances,
six special knowledges mastered,
[I have] done what the Buddha taught! (6) [5413]

Thus indeed Venerable Kāsumāriphaladāyaka Thera spoke these verses.

The legend of Kāsumāriphaladāyaka 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. “Kāsumāri (Sinh. ät dämaṭa) Fruit Donor” The same apadāna, with the same name, appears verbatim as #377 {380} above, with the slight difference that the first and second verses of the standard three-verse concluding refrain are inverted (second first, first second)↩

  3. kaṇṇikāra, kaṇikāra = Sinhala kinihiriya, Pterospermum acerifolium, produces a brilliant mass of yellow flowers; Engl. a.k.a. karnikar, bayur tree, maple-leaf bayur, caniyar (now archaic?), dinner-plate tree; Bodhi tree of Siddhattha Buddha.↩

  4. kāsumārī (Skt. kāśmarī) is a small timber tree, Gmelina arborea (Verb.), which is called ǟt demaṭa in Sinhala. It also bears yellow flowers.↩