[502. {505.}1 Pāraphaliya2]
I saw the golden Sambuddha,
Sacrificial Recipient,
who had entered onto the road,
shining like a dinner-plate tree. (1) [5420]
In the ninety-one aeons since
I gave [him] pāra-fruit3 back then,
I’ve come to know no bad rebirth:
that is the fruit of giving fruit. (2) [5421]
My defilements are [now] burnt up;
all [new] existence is destroyed.
Like elephants with broken chains,
I am living without constraint. (3) [5422]
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) [5423]
The four analytical modes,
and these eight deliverances,
six special knowledges mastered,
[I have] done what the Buddha taught! (5) [5424]
Thus indeed Venerable Pāraphaliya4 Thera spoke these verses.
The legend of Pāraphaliya5 Thera is finished.
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.↩
“Pāra Fruit-er”. BJTS reads Vāra°, both cite Pāda° as alt., but none of these is an identifiable fruit. BJTS Sinh. gloss just gives the Pāli as Sinhala, vāraphalayak (“a fruit [called] vāra). The lack of care/the disagreement about the name of the fruit (and hence of the monk) suggests, as does the poem itself, just a few strung-together repeating feet from the main text, that this is a “filler”. Cf. in this regard on the note on the name of the previous apadāna, #501 {504}, that the present one is omitted in at least one mss. with its name supplied to the content of the previous one (which content is filled, in turn, with an apadāna already presented twice in the main text above!)↩
BJTS reads “vāra fruit”↩
BJTS reads Vāra°↩
BJTS reads Vāra°↩