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82
MAHÂVAGGA.
.
1, 4, 3.
Tapussa and Bhallika : “Here, my noble friends, at the foot of the Râgâyatana tree, is staying the Blessed One, who has just become Sambuddha. Go and show your reverence to him, the Blessed One, by (offering him) rice-cakes and lumps of honey. Long will this be to you for a good and for a blessing.'
3. And the merchants Tapussa and Bhallika took rice-cakes and lumps of honey, and went to the place where the Blessed One was; having approached him and respectfully saluted the Blessed One, they stationed themselves near him; standing near him, the merchants Tapussa and Bhallika thus addressed the Blessed One: May, O Lord, the Blessed One accept from us these rice-cakes and lumps of honey, that that may long be to us for a good and for a blessing !'
4. Then the Blessed One thought: The Tathâgatas? do not accept (food) with their hands. Now
1 The term Tathagata is, in the Buddhistical literature, exclusively applied to Sammâsambuddhas, and it is more especially used in the Pitakas when the Buddha is represented as speaking of himself in the third person as the Tathagata. The meaning 'sentient being,' which is given to the word in the Abhidhânappadipikâ, and in Childers's Dictionary, is not confirmed, as far as we know, by any passage of the Pitakas. This translation of the word is very possibly based merely on a misunderstanding of the phrase often repeated in the Sutta Pitaka: hoti tathāgato param maranâ, which means, of course, does a Buddha exist after death?' In the Gaina books we sometimes find the term tatthagaya (tatragata), he who has attained that world, i.e. emancipation,' applied to the Ginas as opposed to other beings who are called ihagaya (idhagata), 'living in this world. See, for instance, the Ginakaritra, $ 16. Considering the close relation in which most of the dogmatical terms of the Gainas stand to those of the Bauddhas, it is difficult to believe that tathāgata and tatthagaya
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