Sambodhi 1994 Vol 19

Author(s): Jitendra B Shah, N M Kansara
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 56

R.N. MEHTA
SAMBODHI Magga' to listeners. While deciding about the individuals to whom he should proclaim his revelation, he thought of his teachers and his fellow practitioners in penance. His teachers were not living, so he went to the Mrgadava, where he met his friends and gave the first discourse on the Magga, and the cycle of Dhamma began its movement. His first disciples were his own colleagues.
During liis career he came across a cross-section of contemporaries of many beliefs, some of them joined him and others continued to chart their own ways. If this social phenomenon be taken into consideration one can easily infer that lord Buddha lived in a society with various shades of belief-systems, from which he started developing his order of the Buddhist Sramanas. It is, therefore, natural that the society shared many common ideas and behaviour patterns, that would indicate the unity and diversity of the system.
Mahāparinibbäna and adoption of earlier practice
Significantly when Lord Buddha was passing away, his disciples were confused over the last-rites. Upon asking the Lord, he indicated that the last -rites and disposal of his inortal remains should follow the practice of the Cakravartins. This indication of the continuity of the system of cremation and post-cremation burial is the foundation at least of the two types of the stupas, the Sarira and the Kula. Tlie Paribogika follows a different system of veneration of the materials used by him,more in the line of the Paduka of Rama, that Bharata brought to Nandigrāma. The Uddeśa was a wish-fulfilling one, that is more a type of devotional structure.
This basic method of the disposal of mortal remains is one of the traditions of post-cremation burial noted in the Satapatla Brāhmana and discovered at several sites in different parts of India. It is known as stupa, a word of long standing. It has various forms in different languages similarly the caitya a word common to Buddliist and Jain structures also give a the same picture. There is a pertinent point to ponder over is its meaning. Usually, it is interpreted as a heap, a type of Chiti from the root Ci(= to collect). However symbolically, it could be derived from cit which means consciousness and with its association with supraconscious Lord Buddha, it could easily give the meaning of a monument that would arouse the consciousness of the follower to the life and teaching of the Venerated Enlightened.