or derivatives from, the Phoenician.) To revert to the texts it is therein stated that the Sattapanni cave, then called “Sarasvati” and “Bamboo-cave,” got its latter name in this wise.  When our Lord first sat in it for Dhyana, it was a large six-chambered natural cave, 50 to 60 feet wide by 33 deep.  One day, while teaching the mendicants outside, our Lord compared man to a Saptaparna (seven-leaved) plant, showing them how after the loss of its first leaf every other could be easily detached, but the seventh leaf—­directly connected with the stem.  “Mendicants,” he said, “there are seven Buddhas in every Buddha, and there are six Bikshus and but one Buddha in each mendicant.  What are the seven?  The seven branches of complete knowledge.  What are the six?  The six organs of sense.  What are the five?  The five elements of illusive being.  And the one which is also ten?  He is a true Buddha who develops in him the ten forms of holiness and subjects them all to the one—­’the silent voice’ (meaning Avolokiteswara).  After that, causing the rock to be moved at His command, the Tathagata made it divide itself into a seventh additional chamber, remarking that a rock too was septenary, and had seven stages of development.  From that time it was called the Sattapanni or the Saptaparna cave.  After the first Synod was held, seven gold statues of the Bhagavat were cast by order of the king, and each of them was placed in one of the seven compartments.”  These in after times, when the good law had to make room to more congenial because more sensual creeds, were taken in charge by various Viharas and then disposed of as explained.  Thus when Mr. Turnour states on the authority of the sacred traditions of Southern Buddhists that the cave received its name from the Sattapanni plant, he states what is correct.  In the “Archeological Survey of India,” we find that Gen. Cunningham identifies this cave with one not far away from it and in the same Baihbar range, but which is most decidedly not our Saptaparna cave.  At the same time the Chief Engineer of Buddha Gaya, Mr. Beglar, describing the Chetu cave, mentioned by Fa-hian, thinks it is the Saptaparna cave, and he is right.  For that, as well as the Pippal and the other caves mentioned in our texts, are too sacred in their associations—­both having been used for centuries by generations of Bhikkhus, unto the very time of their leaving India—­to have their sites so easily forgotten. ---------

On the other hand, the Southern Buddhists, headed by the Ceylonese, open their annals with the following event:—­