{"collection":"Buddhism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/bud/pos/pos16.htm","path":"bud/pos/pos16.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/bud/pos/pos16.htm","text":"SHE, too, was born, when Padumuttara was Buddha, at the city Ha\u014bsavat\u012b, in a clansman's family. And, when grown up, she heard, with a great multitude, the Master teach, and assign a certain Bhikkhun\u012b the chief place among those who had mystic potency.318 And she gave great gifts for seven days to the Buddha and the Order, and aspired to that same rank. . . .\nIn this Buddha-age, she was reborn at S\u0101vatth\u012b as the daughter of the Treasurer. And because her skin was of the colour of the heart 319 of the blue lotus, they called her Uppalava\u1e47\u1e47\u0101.320 Now, when she was come of age, kings and commoners from the whole of India sent messengers to her father, saying: 'Give us your daughter.' Thereupon the Treasurer thought: 'I cannot possibly meet the wishes of all. I will devise a plan.' And, sending for his daughter, he said: 'Dear one, are you able to leave the world?' To her, because she was in her final stage of life, his words were as if oil a hundred times refined had anointed her head. Therefore she said: 'Dear father, I will renounce the world!' He, honouring her, brought her to the Bhikkhun\u012bs' quarters, and let her be ordained.\nA little while afterwards it became her turn for office in the house of the Sabbath.321 And, lighting the lamp, she swept the room. Then taking the flame of the lamp as a visible sign, and contemplating it continually, she brought about Jhana by way of the Lambent Artifice,322 and making that her stepping-stone, she attained Arahantship. With its fruition, intuition and grasp of the Norm were achieved, and she became especially versed in the mystic potency of transformation.323\nAnd the Master, seated in conclave in the Jeta Grove, assigned her the foremost rank in the mystic powers. She, pondering the bliss of Jhana and of fruition, repeated one day certain verses. They had been uttered in anguish by a mother who had been living as her daughter's rival with him who later, when a Bhikkhu, became known as the Ganges-bank Elder,324 and were a reflection on the harm, the vileness and corruption of sensual desires:\nI.\nII.\nJoyful and happy, she meditates on the distinction she has won:\nIII.\nShe works a marvel before the Buddha with his consent, and records the same:\n| With chariot and horses four I came, Made visible by supernormal power, And worshipped, wonder working, at his feet, The wondrous Buddha, Sovran of the world. (229) | \nIV.\nShe is disturbed by M\u0101ra in the S\u0101l-tree Grove, and rebukes him:\nNOTE.\u2013Four g\u0101th\u0101's ascribed to this famous Sister are, in the Therig\u0101th\u0101, recorded without break. The Commentary breaks them up into four episodes. In the first, a merchant's wife at S\u0101vatth\u012b, about to bear her first child in her husband's prolonged absence on business at R\u0101jagaha, is turned out by his mother, who disbelieves the wife's fidelity. She seeking her husband, and delivered of a son at a wayside bungalow, another merchant carries off the babe in her absence, and adopts it. A robber-chief finds the distracted mother, and she bears him a daughter. This child she accidentally injures, and flees from the chief's wrath. Years after her son, yet a youth, weds both mother and daughter, ignorant of the kinship. The mother discovers the scar on her daughter's head, and identifies her rival as her own child.\n 318 Iddhi.\n \n 319 Gabbha, or matrix. So also Ang. Nik. Commentary. But cf. Dr. Neumann's note. And below, verse 257.\n \n 320 Lotus-hued. The lengthy legend, or chain of legends, associating the past lives of this famous Ther\u012b with the lotus-flower is fully translated from the Anguttara Commentary in Mrs. Bode's Women Leaders, etc., J.R.A.S., 1893, 540-551. It is only interesting as folk-lore, and not as illustrating any point in her Psalm, hence is here omitted.\n \n 321 Uposath\u0101g\u0101re k\u0101lav\u0101ro p\u0101pu\u1e47i, a phrase I have not yet met with elsewhere.\n \n 322 See Buddhist Psy., 43, n. 4; 57, n. 2; 58.\n \n 323 The standard description of the modes of Iddhi are given in English in Rhys Davids' Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 277.\n \n 324 See Therag\u0101th\u0101, verses 127, 128. See note below, p. 114.\n \n 325 I have read pabbaji, not pabbaji\u014b, following the majority of the MSS. consulted by Pischel, as well as the Commentary. It is less forced to read, in s\u0101, 'she,' and not 'I,' where no other pronoun follows (s\u0101'ha\u014b). Verse (226) thus becomes the comment of Upp\u0103l\u0103va\u1e47\u1e47\u0101 on the mother's distressful utterance.\n \n 326 The Pali metre changes here from the usual \u015bloka to a mixed\n jagat\u012b and trishs\u1e6dubh metre, but changes back again after verse 231.\n Cf. the other version of this Psalm in the Appendix. e.g.:\n \n \n\u02d8 \u02d8 \u02d8 \u02d8 \u02d8 \u02d8 _ _ _ _ _ _ S u p u p p h i t a g g a \u014b u p a g a m m a p \u0101 d a p a \u014b || (jagat\u012b) \u02d8 \u02d8 \u02d8 \u02d8 \u02d8 \u02d8 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ e k \u0101 t u v a \u014b t i \u1e6d \u1e6d h a s i r u k k h a m \u016b l e || (trishs\u1e6dubh) \n 327 \n M\u0101ra was himself an adept at this kind of magic (see Majjh. Nik., i. 332). I follow the Commentary and Dr. Windisch (M\u0101ra und Buddha, 139 \u017f\u017f.) in making the Sister speak the verse, her special gift being 'mystic potency,' or Iddhi. \n 328 Cf. Ps. xxxv.","title":"Psalms of the Sisters: Canto XI. Psalms of Twelve Verses","type":"page"}