Text of Confucianism Part 02

SR No.: 007676
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Legge
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1882
Total Pages: 2405
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 43 MB

Page 1808

IV, 22.
THE LADY ÂMRA SEES BUDDHA.
251
On this the heart of the overseer greatly rejoiced", and he made religious offerings to Buddha, the law, and the church. Buddha now leaving the city gate went on towards the river Ganges. 1740
The overseer from his deep reverence for Buddha named the gate (through which the lord had passed) the 'Gautama gate?' Meanwhile the people all by the side of the river Ganges went forth to pay reverence to the lord of the world. 1741
They prepared for him every kind of religious offering, and each one with his gaudy boat (deco rated boat)s invited him to cross over. The lord of the world, considering the number of the boats, feared lest by an appearance of partiality in accepting one, he might hurt the minds of all the rest. 1742
Therefore in a moment by his spiritual power he transported himself and the great congregation (across the river), leaving this shore he passed at once to that, 1743
Signifying thereby the passage in the boat of wisdom * (from this world to Nirvana), a boat large enough to transport all that lives (to save the world), even as without a boat he crossed without hindrance the river (Ganges). 1744
1 The account here given is less exact than that of the Mahaparinibbâna-Sutta, and it would seem as if it were borrowed from a popular form of that work.
This is in agreement with the Southern account (see Rhys Davids, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi, p. 21).
There is no mention here made of the river being 'brimful and overflowing' as in the Southern books, nor of the search for rafts of wood or basket-work.
• Compare the account given.by Rhys Davids (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi, p. 21) and the verse or song there preserved.
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