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In his last 18 hours, as he died a painful death from a mesenteric infarction,
the buddha Gotama is alleged to have said to his confidant Ānanda: 'Ānanda,
there are four places the sight of which should erouse emotion in the faithful.
Which are they? "Here the tathāgata was born" is the first. "Here
the tathāgata attained supreme awakening" is the second. "Here
the tathāgata set in motion the wheel of teaching" is the third. "Here
the tathāgata attained the nibbāna-element without remainder" is
the fourth. And, Ānanda, the faithful monks and nuns, and male and female
lay-followers will visit those places. And anyone who dies while making the pilgrimage
to these shrines with a devout heart will, at the breaking up of the body after
death, be reborn in a Brahmā world.' ('Mahāparinibbāna sutta').
These words put into Gotama's mouth testify to early development of pilgrimage
by the ancient buddhists. The four sites referred to, the 'places arousing emotion'
(samvejanīyatṭhāna), are Lumbiṇī,
Uruvelā (Bodhgaya), Isipatana
(Sārnāth), and Kusinārā
(Kushinagar). They are still the four main pilgrimage destinations in India for
buddhists. I visited them in January with the Bodhikusuma Buddhist and Meditation Center (Sydney).
Lumbiṇī
Lumbiṇī was a forest where Gotama was born in about 484 BCE. It
was within the small republican polity of Sākya, whose capital was Kapilavatthu.
Contrary to buddhist myth, Gotama was not a prince: his father was not a king,
rather, the tribal chief in an oligarchic republic where any farmer-warrior eligible
for election was a rājan. Kapilavatthu was destroyed by the king
of Kosala when Gotama was in his late 70s, and Sākya seems to have had no
more life as a recognizable political entity. The name is still in use because
Gotama was referred to as the Sakyan son (Sākyaputta) or Sakyan sage (Sākyamuni).
The latter epithet, characteristically used by Mahāyānikas, is of 'Hīnāyana'
provenance, and appears on an inscription in Bharhut dating from 100-80 BCE.
We do not know the boy's first name. Later hagiographers gave him the name
Siddhattha. The epithet, siddhatta, meaning 'that which has attained
the goal', was used by jains to refer to the perfected personal ātman,
'soul' or 'self', when it gained release and went to the place of siddhi,
'perfection', at the top of the world where all the siddhas, 'perfected
ones', went (Norman, A philological approach to buddhism). The transformation
of an epithet into a proper noun was common in ancient India, and the buddhists
appropriated many terms from their more powerful rivals the jains. The oldest
buddhist texts refer to the man only by his clan name, Gotama.
We also do not know his mother's name. Most buddhist traditions call her Māyā.
This is a mistake based on a sound change in the word for mother, mātā,
resulting from a change of intervocalic -t- to -y- in the Māgadhī
dialect (Norman, A philological approach to buddhism). Buddhist myth
says she died within a week of childbirth, which jars with a statement
of Gotama's that when he left home as a youth to seek awakening he left his parents
weeping.
Buddhist hagiography has it that the boy was able to walk and speak from birth.
They say he took seven steps and announced: 'I am the highest in the world; I
am the best in the world; I am the foremost in the world. This is my last birth;
now there is no renewal of being in future lives for me.'
Stephen Batchelor gives an account of Gotama's boyhood at Dharma
Seed. And see Lumbinī,
Lumbini
and Lumbini
on trial.
The conventional view is that Lumbiṇī is located at a site
that is now within the borders of the modern state of Nepal, which is the basis
of an anachronistic claim that Gotama was a Nepali. This site is contested: an
alternative location suggested is Domingarh,
in India; likewise, the location of Kapilavatthu could be at Maghar.
Uruvelā
The Buddha myth says that Gotama, at age 35, was staying in the Uruvelā
forest near the village of Senānīgāma, on the banks of the Nerañjarā
river (now called the Lilanjan river). This was some ten kilometers south of the
brahmanical holy center of Gayā, in Magadha (today, southern Bihar). It was
about 449 BCE. It was there that, through meditation, Gotama awakened to the insights
that were the basis of his subsequent teaching, and which got him acknowledgment
by his peers as a buddha, 'awakened one'. The epithet buddha was one
of a number of such titles sought by holy men, the most prestigious being jina,
'conqueror'. Ken Norman (A philological approach to buddhism) notes that
the concept buddha is also used by Jains, and was a word in common use before
the origin of both buddhism and jainism. It referred to someone who was 'awakened'
to the possibilities of release from saṃsāra. Norman comments: '… and
it was then a matter of the historical development in the terminology of both
religions that the specific distinction which those words denote now in those
two religions arose. That is, there were buddhas and there were jinas before the
beginning of both Buddhism and Jainism.'
André Bareau argues that Uruvelā was not the location of Gotama's
awakening, and the early buddhists had no knowledge of or interest in the site
of Gotama's awakening, but ancient buddhists chose Uruvelā as the location
during the development of a buddha cult and associated pilgrimage before the end
of the 4th century BCE ('Le buddha et Uruvilvā'). The great buddhist emperor,
Asoka (304-232 BCE), visited it. The name Bodhgaya is modern, but usefully serves
to distinguish the site from the hindus' Gayā. Gotama expressed his disdain
for seeking to purify oneself by bathing at Gayā in the 'Vatthupama
sutta'.
Stephen Batchelor gives a fascinating account of Gotama's awakening at Dharma
Seed. And see Uruvelā,
A
history of Bodh Gaya, Bodh
Gaya, and A buddhist site under threat.
Rājagaha
Rajgir (Rājagaha in Pāli) is an ancient settlement that, in the 5th
century BCE, was the site for the capital of the monarchical state of Magadha
(today, southern Bihar). Gotama made many visits there, and legend locates the
giving of many discourses at a nearby hill, the wonderfully-named Vultures Peak
(Gijjhakūṭa). Buddhist legend (dismissed by modern scholars) says that
an assembly of monks was held at Rājagaha 3 months after Gotama's death to
recite and canonize the suttas and monastic rules.
Stephen Batchelor gives an account of Gotama's early visits to Rājagaha
at Dharma
Seed. And see Rājagaha,
and Rajgir.
Isipatana
Gotama initially hesitated about teaching about the insights that he had come
to. However, the myth says he decided to share his insights with a group of 5
friends, also ascetics. They were staying near Varanasi (Bāraṇāsī
in Pāli). It would have taken him 2 months on foot to walk there from Magadha.
The myth says he found them at Migadāya, also called Isipatana
(today's Sārnāth), meaning the place of the deer or antelope, some 10 kilometers north of Bārāṇasī.
The stories around the first discourse, and its location at Isipatana-Migadāya, are a late
addition to Gotama's hagiography; the discourse is not pictured in art until the
1st century CE, at Sāñcī, and the stories are not present in
Chinese translations of Indian buddhist texts until the 3rd century CE (Patricia
Karetzky, 'The first sermon').
The discourse he reportedly gave is known as the 'Dhammacakkappavattana
sutta', meaning the 'discourse on setting in motion the wheel of Dhamma'.
It has two significances in the history of buddhism. One, it began Gotama's 45-year
teaching career. Two, it occasioned the founding of the buddhist monastic order
(at that stage, of men only), because after the discourse one of the other 5 ascetics,
Koṇḍañña, asked to join with Gotama in a new community
(saṅgha) of ascetics. This group was distinct and separate from
the orthodox brahmins and sannyasins of the dominant Vedic brahmanical
religion (which, over 600 later years later, evolved into hinduism), and from
other heterodox ascetics who rejected brahmanism (jains and ājīvikas).
While this sutta is claimed to be Gotama's first address, it is not
mentioned in the oldest biography in existence, the Ariyapariyesana
sutta.
'… here we have no Suddhodana, no Mahāmāyā, no Mahāpajāpatī
Gotamī, no Yasodharā and Rāhula, no pleasure palace, no women of
the harem, no four signs, no Channa, no renunciatory fanfare, no practice of the
austerities, no Sujātā's rice-milk, no Māra's army at the Bodhi
tree, no three watches of the night, no seven weeks after Enlightenment, no text
of the First Sermon (replaced with the heap of snares, Frame IV!).' (Jonathan
Walters, 'Suttas as history: four approaches to the Sermon on the noble quest')
That sutta reports that his first discourse was a parable about the
snares of sensual passions. One of the aspects of the 'Dhammacakkappavattana sutta'
that indicates it was not Gotama's first discourse is its use of the term ariyasaccaṃ,
translated as 'noble truth', to describe the four themes the ancient buddhists
used to summarize his teaching. However, the terms 'noble' and 'truth' were probably
not used in the original formulation of these themes - which was idaṃ
dukkhaṃ ayaṃ dukkhasamudayo ayaṃ dukkhanirodho ayaṃ dukkhanirodhagāminī,
as found in the Bhayabherava
sutta (Norman, 'The four noble truths: a problem of Pāli syntax').
Stephen Batchelor gives an account of Gotama's first discourses at Dharma
Seed. And see Isipatana,
and Sarnath.
Sāvatthī
Sravasti (Sāvatthī in Pāli) was the capital of the kingdom of
Kosala, in the eastern part of today's Uttar Pradesh. Buddhist myth has it that
Gotama spent 25 wet-season residences in Sāvatthī. These rains-residences
were during the 3 months when monsoons prevented ascetics from wandering about
begging and teaching. The Sāvatthī period, from when Gotama was aged
56 to his late 70s, was a critical period for the formulation of buddhist teachings.
One of the more peculiar events attributed to Gotama here is 'the
miracle of Sāvatthī', during which flames shot up from his upper
body and water streamed from his lower body.
Stephen Batchelor gives an account of the Sāvatthī period at Dharma
Seed. And see Sāvatthī,
and Sravasti.
Kusinārā
Kushinagar (Kusinārā in Pāli) was the town where Gotama died,
in about 404 BCE. Of the four 'places arousing emotion', this is the one most
likely to have actually been the place where the event associated with it took
place (Bareau, 'Le parinirvāṇa du buddha et la naissance de la religion
bouddhique'). The 80-year old Gotama was in the company of his attendant, Ānanda.
The two old men had been walking northwards from Rājagaha, begging for alms-food
and sleeping rough, with Gotama giving public talks along the way. Gotama got
sick, 'with violent and deadly pains', during his last rains-residence at Beluvagāmaka,
north of Vesāli, the capital of the Vajji republic. Heading north again,
at the village of Pāvā (today in northern Bihar), he ate some hog's
mincemeat (sūkaramaddava), which gave him a stomach pain and caused
severe bleeding from his rectum. The food had triggered mesenteric infarction,
an obstruction of the blood vessels of the mesentery, a part of the intestinal
wall.
Gotama and Ānanda struggled on to Kusinārā, the capital of the
northern Malla tribe. Ānanda described it as 'this little mud-walled town,
this backwoods town, this branch township'. That Gotama had died in such a humble
place was an embarrassment to later buddhists and they invented a myth that it
had been a great city called Kusāvatī in a previous wordly existence,
a myth they put into the mouth of the dying Gotama (in the 'Mahaparinibbana sutta').
Gotama and Ānanda stayed at a grove, the Uparvartana wood, near the Hiraññavati
river, outside the town, and there Gotama died.
'From the information contained in the [Mahāparinibbāna] sutta
we are able to estimate that he died about fifteen to eighteen hours after the
attack ... the Buddha died from septic shock due to bacterial toxins and the infiltration
of contaminated intestinal contents into his blood stream. This medical history
is consistent with the usual course of this illness for a person of the Buddha's
age.' (Mettanando Bhikkhu, 'The cause of the buddha's death')
His death in winter makes it unlikely that the food that triggered his second
attack of mesenteric infarction was a mushroom, as vegetarian mahāyānin
buddhists believe (not wanting to accept that he ate meat), since the type of
mushroom that the mahāyānikas believe Gotama died of was unseasonal
(Oskar von Hinüber, 'The last meal of the buddha').
Gotama left no recognized successor. He reportedly said to Ānanda: 'Ānanda,
you might think: "The word of the teacher is a thing of the past, now we have
no more teacher." But you should not regard it so. The doctrine and training taught
by me and laid down for you are your teacher after I am gone.'
His last words were, reportedly: handa 'dāni bhikkhave āmantayāmi
vo vayadhammā saṅkhārā appamādena sampādetha
('Well now, bhikkhus, I declare this to you: It is in the nature of formations
to decay. Attain perfection through diligence.')
Stephen Batchelor gives a moving account of Gotama's last days at Dharma
Seed. And see Kusinārā,
Kushinagara,
and Lumbini
on trial.
The place that today's pilgrims visit as the site of Kusinārā is
contested: an alternative location suggested is Rampurva.
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Pilgrimage sites in north india