(7) Thus Sakyamuni had been one of the thousand little boys who floated in the box in the Ganges.  How long back the former age was we cannot tell.  I suppose the tope of the two fathers who became Pratyeka Buddhas had been built like the one commemorating the laying down of weapons after Buddha had told his disciples of the strange events in the past.

(8) Bhadra-kalpa, “the Kalpa of worthies or sages.”  “This,” says Eitel, p. 22, “is a designation for a Kalpa of stability, so called because 1000 Buddhas appear in the course of it.  Our present period is a Bhadra-kalpa, and four Buddhas have already appeared.  It is to last 236 million years, but over 151 millions have already elapsed.”

(9) “The king of demons.”  The name Mara is explained by “the murderer,” “the destroyer of virtue,” and similar appellations.  “He is,” says Eitel, “the personification of lust, the god of love, sin, and death, the arch-enemy of goodness, residing in the heaven Paranirmita Vasavartin on the top of the Kamadhatu.  He assumes different forms, especially monstrous ones, to tempt or frighten the saints, or sends his daughters, or inspires wicked men like Devadatta or the Nirgranthas to do his work.  He is often represented with 100 arms, and riding on an elephant.”  The oldest form of the legend in this paragraph is in “Buddhist Suttas,” Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi, pp. 41-55, where Buddha says that, if Ananda had asked him thrice, he would have postponed his death.

(10) Or the Vinaya-pitaka.  The meeting referred to was an important one, and is generally spoken of as the second Great Council of the Buddhist Church.  See, on the formation of the Buddhist Canon, Hardy’s E. M., chap. xviii, and the last chapter of Davids’ Manual, on the History of the Order.  The first Council was that held at Rajagriha, shortly after Buddha’s death, under the presidency of Kasyapa;—­say about B.C. 410.  The second was that spoken of here;—­say about B.C. 300.  In Davids’ Manual (p. 216) we find the ten points of discipline, in which the heretics (I can use that term here) claimed at least indulgence.  Two meetings were held to consider and discuss them.  At the former the orthodox party barely succeeded in carrying their condemnation of the laxer monks; and a second and larger meeting, of which Fa-hien speaks, was held in consequence, and a more emphatic condemnation passed.  At the same time all the books and subjects of discipline seem to have undergone a careful revision.

The Corean text is clearer than the Chinese as to those who composed the Council,—­the Arhats and orthodox monks.  The leader among them was a Yasas, or Yasada, or Yedsaputtra, who had been a disciple of Ananda, and must therefore have been a very old man.

CHAPTER XXVI

REMARKABLE DEATH OF ANANDA.