[500. {503.}[1] Kāsumāriphaladāyaka[2]]
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 kāsumāri[4] 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.
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. ↩︎
“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) ↩︎
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. ↩︎
kāsumārī (Skt. kāśmarī) is a small timber tree, Gmelina arborea (Verb.), which is called ǟt demaṭa in Sinhala. It also bears yellow flowers. ↩︎