be looked on as pure.(10) I am weary of this body, and troubled by it as an evil.”  With this he grasped a knife, and was about to kill himself.  But he thought again:—­“The World-honoured one laid down a prohibition against one’s killing himself."(11) Further it occurred to him:—­“Yes, he did; but I now only wish to kill three poisonous thieves."(12) Immediately with the knife he cut his throat.  With the first gash into the flesh he attained the state of a Srotapanna;(13) when he had gone half through, he attained to be an Anagamin;(14) and when he had cut right through, he was an Arhat, and attained to pari-nirvana;(15) (and died).

   NOTES

(1) Karanda Venuvana; a park presented to Buddha by king Bimbisara, who also built a vihara in it.  See the account of the transaction in M. B., p. 194.  The place was called Karanda, from a creature so named, which awoke the king just as a snake was about to bite him, and thus saved his life.  In Hardy the creature appears as a squirrel, but Eitel says that the Karanda is a bird of sweet voice, resembling a magpie, but herding in flocks; the cuculus melanoleucus.  See “Buddhist Birth Stories,” p. 118.

   (2) The language here is rather contemptuous, as if our author had no
   sympathy with any other mode of disposing of the dead, but by his own
   Buddhistic method of cremation.

(3) The Chinese characters used for the name of this cavern serve also to name the pippala (peepul) tree, the ficus religiosa.  They make us think that there was such a tree overshadowing the cave; but Fa-hien would hardly have neglected to mention such a circumstance.

(4) A very great place in the annals of Buddhism.  The Council in the Srataparna cave did not come together fortuitously, but appears to have been convoked by the older members to settle the rules and doctrines of the order.  The cave was prepared for the occasion by king Ajatasatru.  From the expression about the “bringing forth of the King,” it would seem that the Sutras or some of them had been already committed to writing.  May not the meaning of King {.} here be extended to the Vinaya rules, as well as the Sutras, and mean “the standards” of the system generally?  See Davids’ Manual, chapter ix, and Sacred Books of the East, vol. xx, Vinaya Texts, pp. 370-385.

   (5) So in the text, evidently for pari-nirvana.

(6) Instead of “high” seats, the Chinese texts have “vacant.”  The character for “prepared” denotes “spread;”—­they were carpeted; perhaps, both cushioned and carpeted, being rugs spread on the ground, raised higher than the other places for seats.

   (7) Did they not contrive to let him in, with some cachinnation, even
   in so august an assembly, that so important a member should have been
   shut out?

   (8) “The life of this body” would, I think, fairly express the idea of
   the bhikshu.