The Life or Legend of Gaudama, the Buddha of the Burmese (Volume I)Bigandet, Paul Ambroise
Religion
The Life or Legend of Gaudama, the Buddha of the Burmese (Volume I)
Bigandet, Paul Ambroise
Buddhism -- Burma; Burma -- Religion; Gautama Buddha
The fifth Dzan, or perfect stability, is the happy
lot of the beings living in the five last seats. Those fortunate
inmates are so entirely rooted in truth, and so perfectly exempt
from all that causes mutability, that they arrive at a state of
complete fixity, the whole of their soul being riveted on truth.
Apology is certainly due to the reader, who is but slightly
initiated in such abstruse subjects, for laying before him
particulars with which he is so unfamiliar; but this trouble
must be borne up by him who desires to obtain access into the
gloomy sanctuary of Buddhism.
[13] The episode of these two merchants is well known to the
inhabitants of the Irrawaddy valley. In three different
manuscripts which the writer has had in his hands, he has found
it related with almost the same particulars. Oukkalaba, the
place the two young men started from, was situated probably on
the spot now occupied by the village of Twaintay, or not far
from it. How far that place was from the sea in those remote
times it is not possible to ascertain with precision. Certain it
is, that it was a port from which vessels sailed across the Bay
of Bengal. The port of Eedzeitha has not as yet been identified
with any known locality. It was situated in all probability
between the mouth of the Krichna and that of the Hoogly. One of
the manuscripts mentions that when Gaudama handed over to the
two merchants eight hairs of his head, he bade them, on their
arrival in their country, deposit the hairs on a small hill
called Seingouttara, where the relics of the three former
Buddhas of our period had been enshrined. They were twenty-seven
days in reaching Maudin or Cape Negrais, rather a long voyage.
Having come to their own place, they related to the governor all
the particulars of their interesting journey. The latter,
without loss of time, assembled the people and set out in search
of the Seingouttara mount. All the eminences were cleared of
their brushwood, but the mount could not be discovered. Not
knowing what to do, they consulted the Nats on that affair. At
last, through their assistance, the mount was found out. But
when they inquired about the place of the relics of the three
former Buddhas, the Nats of Yesapan, Inandra, and Gauveinda
confessed that they knew nothing on the subject, but referred
the inquirers to other Nats older than they, viz.: those of
Deckina, Yauhani, Maubee, Ameisa, and Tsoolay, who at once
pointed out the spot which they were so eagerly searching after.
This spot is no other than the one over which stands and towers
the lofty and massive Shoay Dagon. They erected a Dzedy, in
which they enshrined the relics they had brought with them, the
eight hairs of Buddha. This story is doubtless the foundation on
which rests the popular belief that those very hairs are to this
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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