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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra www.kobatirth.orgAcharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
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was in possession of the King of Kast. Subsequently the elephant came into the possession of King Bimbisära, probably as part of the wedding gift from Mahapasenādi, the King of Kasi-Kosala. The elephant is no other than one called Nālāgiri2 in the Pali Nidanakatha, set upon the Buddha by Prince Ajätasattu at the instigation of Devadatta. The earliest trace of the legend about the taming of this elephant by the Buddha can be found in a bas-relief at Bharhut, bearing the inscription Dhanapala batthinagadamana". The legend must have come into existence sometime before the construction of the railing of the Bharhut Stupa, i.e., before the 2nd or 3rd century B.C. But the Pāli Dhammapada has nothing to do with this particular legend which seems to have resulted from an after-thought on the part of the Buddhist theologians. The chapter on the Buddha goes, however, to prove that at the time of the compilation of the Pali Dhammapada the Buddha was sufficiently deified and that the legends about the machinations of Mära and his daughters were yet in the making. As shown elsewhere, the process of deification of the Buddha through the Birth-stories was synchronous with the history of schisms within the Buddhist Order. Seeing that the date of composition of the Jātakas in their oldest form cannot be earlier than the first century of Buddha's demise, one must admit that the date of the Pali Dhammapada falls within the 4th and the 3rd century B.C.
Tradition attributes to one Dharmatrata the compilation of each one of the three copies of the Dhammapada, viz., the original of the Fa-kbeu-king or the text with 500 verses, the original of the text portion of the Chuh-yau-king or the text with 900 verses, and the Udanavarga or the latest Sanskrit copy with 1000 verses. In the Chinese preface to the Chuh-yau-king
"Tattha Dhanapalako nämâti tada Käsirañño hatthicariyam pesetvá ramaniya nagavane gāhāpitassa hatthino etaṁ ndmaṁ.”
In the Tibetan translation, the elephant is called, "Ratnapala" or "Vasupala," which is the same as Dhanapala. See Rockhill's Life of the Buddha, p. 9.
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