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I, 4, 5. ADMISSION TO THE ORDER OF BHIKKHUS. 83
with what shall I accept the rice-cakes and lumps of honey?' Then the four Mahârâga gods", understanding by the power of their minds the reflection which had arisen in the mind of the Blessed One, offered to the Blessed One from the four quarters (of the horizon) four bowls made of stone (saying), May, O Lord, the Blessed One accept herewith the rice-cakes and the lumps of honey!' The Blessed One accepted those new stone bowls; and therein he received the rice-cakes and honey lumps, and those, when he had received, he ate.
5. And Tapussa and Bhallika, the merchants, when they saw that the Blessed One had cleansed 2 his bowl and his hands, bowed down in reverence
should not originally have conveyed very similar ideas. We think that on the long way from the original Mâgadhi to the Pâli and Sanskrit, the term tatthagata or tatthâgata (tatra+âgata), 'he who has arrived there, i.e. at emancipation,' may very easily have undergone the change into tathāgata, which would have made it unintelligible, were we not able to compare its unaltered form as preserved by the Gainas.
1 The four guardian gods of the quarters of the world; see Hardy's Manual, p. 24. Their Pâli names, as given in the Abhidhânappadîpikâ, v. 31, 32, the Dîpavamsa XVI, 12, &c., were, Dhatarattha, Virulhaka, Virûpakkha, and Vessavana or Kuvera.
2 Onitapattapâni, which is said very frequently of a person who has finished his meal, is translated by Childers, whose hand is removed from the bowl' (comp. also Trenckner, Pali Miscellany, p. 66). We do not think this explanation right, though it agrees with, or probably is based on, a note of Buddhaghosa pattato ka a panîta pânim'). Onita, i. e. a vanita, is not a panila, and the end of the dinner was marked, not by the Bhikkhu's removing his band from the bowl, but by his washing the bowl (see Kullavagga VIII, 4, 6), and, of course, his hands. In Sanskrit the meaning of ava-ni is, to pour (water) upon something; see the Petersburg Dictionary. We have translated, therefore, onîtapattapâni accordingly.
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