Kutagara Or From Mens House To Mansion In Eastern India And South East Asia

SR No.: 269707
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: W B Bollee
Publisher: W B Bollee
Total Pages: 25
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 5 MB

Page 11

king of the gods turned into the Buddha's servant, addressing Vissakamma the divine technician and architect in the following words: "Friend, today the Lord (i.e. the Buddha) will go on a 3.000 miles' begging tour. Have 500 kūțågāras produced and make them ready on the entrance building of the Jeta forest (i.e. probably of the monastery named after its donor Jeta in that forest)."
Vissakamma does what he is told. Then, for the Buddha there is a kuţâgara with four openings or entrances, for his two main disciples the same with two, and for the other monks kutagaras with a single entrance. When all have got into their travelling carriage the latter rise into the air for, according to Buddhaghosa, the conquest of gravitation marks those who have given up earthly bonds. It is interesting for the development of Southern Buddhism as well as for the semantics of kuţâgara that this holds true also when the occupant has entered nirvana, to use the periphrastic terminology customary with monks, i.e. when he has died.
Such a case is narrated by Buddhaghosa concerning the Ceylonese thera Kujjatissa who feeling his end near told his fellow monks to put a second bench (pallanka) in his kuţâgara, Now he either died in it or was placed into it after his demise - at any rate the kūţâgara subsequently drifted with him to the Thuparama sanctuary. There another monk named Mahavyaggha who at the time was teaching the Vinaya rules high up in the nearby Lohapasāda palace caught sight of it. Mahāvyaggha then travelled through the air to Kujjatissa's kūţâgara, sat down on the second bench and also entered Nirvāṇa.
Here, therefore, kuţâgara has turned from 'portable seat' to "bier.' This emerges still more clearly from the Mahāvamsa, the older Ceylonese chronicle. For when Mahinda, the first missionary to the island, died, about 200 B.C., he was placed