Loading translation...
“Hide” (Tib. g.yang gzhi; Skt. ajina). “Badge of the non-Buddhist” or, lit., “tīrthika standard” (Tib. mu stegs pa’i rgyal mtshan; Skt. tīrthikadhvaja). See Toh 1-7, F.91.a: btsun pa bdag g.yang gzhi ’chang bar ’tshal lo// bcom ldan ’das kyis bka’ stsal pa/ gti mug ’di ni mu stegs pa’i rgyal mtshan yin no zhes bya ba nas ’gal tshabs can du ’gyur ro zhes bya ba’i bar gong ma bzhin du’o.
Olivelle (2018, p. 237) writes of forest hermits in the Brahmanical traditions (Skt. vanaprastha), “The rejection of cultural mediation in every aspect of life defines the hermit’s asceticism. This is true not just of habitat and food, but in other areas such as clothes, which are made out of tree barks and animal skins.”
The order of these two might suggest that Buddhist monks faced an increased need to “trademark” their look as they traveled and settled beyond the Buddhist heartland.
“Country” (Tib. yul; Skt. janapada). For more on the countries or city-states of north India and Pakistan at the time of the Buddha, see Erdosy 1995, Erdosy 1988, and Allchin and Erdosy 1995.
The Chapter on Leather situates its first narrative “in the frontier country of Aśmaka” (Tib. rdo can zhes bya ba’i yul gyi mtha’ na; Skt. aśmāparāntakeṣu janapadeṣu). Edgerton (aparāntaka, p. 44, col. 2) writes that the Skt. aparāntaka can refer (1) specifically to the country of Aparānta, or (2) more generally to the western border of Magadha. Rotman (2008, p. 392, n. 85) identifies Aśma/Aśmaka with Aśvaka (Pali Assaka) in present-day Maharashtra, which was one of the sixteen great countries (Skt. mahājanapada) of ancient India. In the Pali version of Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s story, however, Soṇa Koṭikaṇṇa visits his mother at home in the village of Kuraraghara in Avanti, another of the mahājanapada; see entry on “Soṇa-Kuṭikaṇṇa, Soṇa-Koṭikaṇṇa” in Malalasekera (1937, online 2021). Thus, Mūlasarvāstivādin and Theravādin sources both situate this story in the south, but in different mahājanapada.
The theme of compassion appears again in the story under the heading “Calf,” where the venerable Upananda, in a fit of pique, has a young calf killed for its hide. The theme of compassion is also found in the Buddha’s allowances at the behest of the venerable Pilindavatsa, who is chronically ill, under the heading “Carriage.” Here, as elsewhere in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, the Buddha relaxes rules for monks who are ill, elderly, or otherwise unable to manage. Another reason for relaxing restrictions emerges in the stories under the headings “Allow to Protect” and “Buskins,” where the Buddha relaxes restrictions so that fancy sandals and bearskins donated by patrons may be accepted, the first for personal use, the second for display in the monastery temple.
This “Center” corresponds roughly with what Johannes Bronkhorst has called the cultural region of “Greater Magadha.” Bronkhorst has devoted several publications to distinguishing the religio-cultural regions of Greater Magadha, where Buddhists, Jains, Ājīvikas, and other groups first flourished, and the more westerly Kuru-Pañcāla region, where Brahmanical heirs to the Vedic tradition formed the dominant religious group. See esp. Bronkhorst 2011.
See Rotman 2008, p. 400, nn. 192, 195, and 196 for a more precise identification of the borders.
Schopen 2022, p. 314. The nun Sthūlanandā plays a similar role in the portions of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya addressed explicitly to nuns, nun probationers, and female novices.
“Practice of austerity”: Tib. sbyangs pa’i yon tan; Skt. dhūtaguṇa. On which, see Roach 2020.
See Toh 1-17, vol. nga, folios 19.a–26.a, esp. 25.a–b. de ’di snyam du dgongs te/ shes par nus pa dang / mthong bar nus pa dang / bla na med pa yang dag par rdzogs par byang chub par nus pa’i lam de gang yin snyam na/ de ’di snyam du dgongs te/ bdag yab shAkya zas gtsang gi khyim na gnas pa’i tshe zhing las kyi mtha’i drung du song nas shing ’dzam bu’i grib ma la ’dug ste/ ’dod pa las dben pa/ sdig pa mi dge ba’i chos las dben pa/ rtog pa dang bcas shing dpyod pa dang bcas pa/ dben pa las skyes pa’i dga’ ba dang / bde ba can bsam gtan dang po nye bar bsgrubs te gnas pa de mngon par dran te/ de ni lam yin/ de ni sgrub pa yin/ shes par nus pa yin/ mthong bar nus pa yin/ bla na med pa yang dag par rdzogs par byang chub par nus pa yin na/ de bdag gis bskyed du yang ’di ltar rid cing nyam chung la zhan pas sla ba ma yin te/ ma la bdag gis ci bder dbugs rngub pa dang / ci bder dbugs ’byung ba dang / ci bder ’bras chan dang zan dron gyi kha zas rags pa bza’ zhing lus mar sar dang til mar gyis byugs la chu ’jam pos lus bkru bar bya’o snyam ste/ de ci bder dbugs rngub pa dang / ci bder dbugs ’byung ba dang / ci bder ’bras chan dang zan dron gyi zhal zas rags pa gsol zhing sku til mar dang mar sar gyis byugs nas chu ’jam pos sku ’khru bar mdzad do.
The asceticism promoted in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya can be described as a soft, permissive, and sometimes simply rhetorical asceticism, at least in comparison to the depiction of more severe, self-mortifying trends esteemed by non-Buddhist śramaṇa or “ascetic” groups of the Buddha’s time. Freiberger (2006) links this “moderate” asceticism to the “Middle Way” between indulgence and self-mortification.
Clarke (2021, p. 15) has used the phrase “reactive” to describe the Vinaya’s approach to rules. Clarke reports that this is similar to what has been described in Chinese and Japanese scholarship as “legislation follows transgression” (Ch. suifan suishi; Jpn. zuibon zuisei, 隨犯隨制). The extant Buddhist vinayas all employ this type of “legal casuistry,” to borrow a categorization used by Garfield (2021, p. 58). For a survey of all the extant vinayas, see Clarke 2015.
Malalasekera reports that Soṇa-Koḷiviśa Thera won eminence among the Buddha’s close disciples as “foremost of those who strove energetically” (Pali: aggaṃ āraddhaviriyānaṃ). See Malalasekera 2021, “Soṇa-Koḷiviśa Thera.”
Though Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s avadāna is related first in the Divyāvadāna itself, Saṅgharakṣita’s avadāna comes before, in the first chapter of The Chapters on Monastic Discipline; see the story under the heading “Creatures” (4.113–4.329) in The Chapter on Going Forth. This avadāna has been translated into English twice recently from the Sanskrit in publications that include the whole Divyāvadāna. See the introductions to both volumes for an overview of this collection of avadānas. For the translation of Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s avadāna specifically, see Tatelman (2005, pp. 25–101), who provides a Sanskrit edition on the facing page of the translation, and Rotman (2008, pp. 39–70), who gives an annotated translation.
Tib. rtogs brjod. On the ninefold and twelvefold classifications of the Buddha’s words, see Lamotte (1988, pp. 143–49), Hirakawa (1990, pp. 74–75), and Anālayo (2016).
We have added numbers in parentheses, italics, and bold type for emphasis. Rotman 2008, p. 5.
The Cammakkhandaka, the Pali parallel to the Sanskrit Carmavastu or The Chapter on Leather, gives Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s name as Soṇakuṭikaṇṇa and places him in the mahājanapada of Avanti; see the Cammakkhandaka’s “Soṇakuṭikaṇṇavatthu.”
For a discussion of the type of being known as a hungry ghost, see Rotman 2021. Plate 1 shows Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa encountering the hungry ghosts in the iron city.
See Clarke 2015, pp. 73–81, for an overview of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya and the languages in which it has been at least partially transmitted, including, e.g., Mongolian.
See Clarke 2014 for an introduction to the Gilgit manuscripts in general and the Vinaya texts among them in particular. See Clarke (2014, p. 21) for a bibliographical survey of the present chapter.
Schopen (2006, pp. 316–17) and Olivelle (2007, p. 177) both argue that the canonical vinayas took shape between the Mauryan and Gupta empires, circa 300
Dutt, N. (1942–50), Gilgit Buddhist Manuscripts. Vol. III. The Sanskrit for this chapter is in Vol. III, pt. 4 (1950), pp. 159–210. The Sanskrit is also available online in a GRETIL edition.
Clarke 2015. The eleven Carmavastu folios are described on p. 21, and the photographs are in plates 32–46.
See Yijing’s Chinese translation of The Chapter on Leather (Taishō 1447: 1048c1–1057b19). In addition, portions of the Sarvāstivādavinaya (Taishō 1435: 178a14–184b17), Mahīśāsakavinaya (Taishō 1421: 144a12–147a25), and Dharmaguptakavinaya (Taishō 1428: 843b11–849b9) were consulted.
For details of the two Soṇas in the Pali texts, see entries on “Soṇa-Kuṭikaṇṇa, Soṇa-Koṭikaṇṇa” and “Soṇa Koḷivisa Thera” in Malalasekera’s Dictionary of Pali Proper Names (2021).
The Chapter on Leather does not have a single global summary (Tib. spyi sdom; Skt. piṇḍoddāna) like the preceding chapters in The Chapters on Monastic Discipline. Instead, there are three summaries (Tib. sdom; Skt. uddāna). The material covered in this first summary takes up approximately two-thirds of the text. The second summary is found on F.272.b while the third is on F.276.a. The chapter ends at 1.333.
Translating the Tib. khrus here as “swimming” (Tib. chu bo la rgyu ba spyod) based on the narrative and ruling found under that section. The full summary here is not extant in Sanskrit.
As there is no separate narrative setting after the section on carriages, we have grouped the items from “carriages” to “wooden sandals” in the summary together in one heading.
The Tibetan text does not mention “near Śrāvastī” as is usual in this nidāna or “setting” formula.
One of the Four Great Kings (mahārāja), demigods who were converted by the Buddha and served as guardians of the world. Vaiśravaṇa was the guardian of the north and was fabled for his wealth. See BHSD, p. 425.
Here, “gandharva” (Tib. dri za) refers to a being in the intermediate state. Such beings linger in this state until they are drawn, in the case of one who will be reborn as a human, to a couple copulating. Driven by lust, they are said to enter or “become conjoined with” the male’s sperm and the female’s ovum. Thus, while the sperm and ovum serve as the direct or substantial cause for the gandharva’s new body, the gandharva’s mind acts as the direct cause for the new being’s stream of consciousness.
“Numbers” (Skt. saṃkhyā; Tib. rtsis). In commenting on this same word in the same formulaic passage earlier in The Chapters on Monastic Discipline, Kalyāṇamitra explains that this to refers to learning to calculate using number names (i.e., tens, hundreds, thousands, etc.); see Toh 4113, F.184.b: rtsis zhes bya ba ni tshig gis brtsi ba ste rtsis su bya ba’o.
According to Kalyāṇamitra, a “yield” (Skt. uddhāra; Tib. dbyung ba) refers to “a yield of material such as bamboo and so forth.” A “deposit” (Skt. nyāsa; Tib. gzhug pa) is when that is stored internally, while an “entrustment” (Skt. nikṣepa: Tib. gzhag pa) is when that is placed externally. See Toh 4113, F.184.b: ’byung ba zhes bya ba ni sprog ma la sogs pa nas rdzas ’byung ba’o //gzhug pa zhes bya ba ni de nyid kyi nang du gzhag pa’o//gzhag pa zhes bya ba ni phyi rol du gzhag pa’o. Kalyāṇamitra does not gloss “withdrawals” (Tib. len pa, Skt. *udgraha?).
“Fare” (Skt. ātarpaṇi; Tib. bsel ba’i rngan pa). Here, “no need for tolls” (Tib. ’gru btsas mi dgos pa) is missing in the Skt.
The Tibetan of The Chapter on Leather gives bskyang ba or “maintain.” The Sanskrit of The Chapter on Leather here reads sukumārā or “gentle” where the Divyāvadāna reads sudūrakṣyā, which Tatelman (2005, p. 37) translates as “very difficult to guard” and Rotman renders “nice to sit on” (2008, p. 43).
The Sanskrit Chapter on Leather has mahāsamudram avatarāmi, or “setting off for the great sea,” where the Tibetan reads simply “leaving.”
Like the Divyāvadāna, the Sanskrit Chapter on Leather depicts Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa as saying, “Mother, I set off for the great sea having performed the rituals for an auspicious, fortunate, and successful journey, yet you speak so inauspiciously.” See: amba ahaṃ kṛtakautukamaṅgalasvastyayano mahāsamudraṃ saṃprasthitaḥ / tvaṃ cedṛśāny amaṅgalāni karoṣi.
Translation following the rendering given by Tatelman (p. 39) of the parallel Skt. phrase in the Divyāvadāna: apāyān kiṃ na paśyasi. See the Tib. trans. ngan song la phyi’i phyir mi gzigs.
The “transgression” here would seem to be a transgression of the cultural expectation that a child address their parents with respect.
The Sanskrit varies from the Tibetan here, identifying Śroṇa as the caravan leader, as implied in his father’s announcement of the journey. It also establishes more clearly that he and Dāsaka and Pālaka had gone away from the caravan (asau śroṇaḥ koṭīkarṇo ’pi sārthavāho dāsakapālakāv ādāya sārthamadhyād ekānte ’pakramya āyaṃ vyayaṃ ca tulayitum ārabdhaḥ).
The translation follows the more complete Sanskrit here: tatra dvāre puruṣas tiṣṭhati kālo raudraś caṇḍo lohitākṣa udbaddhapiṇḍo lohalaguḍavyagrahastaḥ.
The Tibetan has Śroṇa hail this person as nang rje (“master of the house,” i.e., “husband”), whereas the Sanskrit has Śroṇa hail him simply as puruṣa (“man” or “friend”). “Good man” seems a happy medium as a friendly address that is neither too formal nor too casual.
In the Tibetan text, the man at the gate merely repeats the words used by the hungry ghosts. The Sanskrit text makes better sense; the man points out that Śroṇa has indeed come out of the city alive because of his great merit: puṇyamaheśākhyas tvam*/ yena tvaṃ pretanagaraṃ praviśya svastikṣemābhyāṃ nirgataḥ.
Tib. gzhal med khang, literally “an inconceivable dwelling.” Skt. vimāna usually refers to a flying mansion or palace.
The Heaven of the Thirty-Three Gods, situated according to ancient Indian cosmology above the realm of the four heavenly kings.
This is ambiguous. The Tibetan epithet bcom ldan ’das is most often used for the Buddha himself, whereas the Sanskrit bhagavat (here in the genitive: bhagavato ’ntike) is frequently used for great teachers, such as Mahākātyāyana. Śroṇa does later ask for leave to go to see the Buddha, so perhaps he is already voicing that ambition here.
Tibetan: rgyun du zhugs pa’i ’bras bu; Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit form: srota-āpattiphala. The first in a sequence of stages on the path to becoming an arhat (the fourth stage).
Tib. skyabs su ’gro ba; Skt. śaraṇāgamana. The ritual of seeking refuge in the Three Jewels (the Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha), available for lay people.
Tib. bslab pa’i gzhi rnams; Skt. śikṣāpada. There are many precepts for novices, monks, and nuns, but five basic rules apply to all Buddhists, including the laity: to abstain from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, false speech, and intoxicants.
The four collections of sūtras or “discourses” given by the Buddha (and also some of the great disciples): Long Discourses, Middle-Length Discourses, Connected Discourses, and Numerical Discourses; known as the Nikāyas in the Theravādin (Pali) tradition. The contents of the various collections varied between the different early schools of Buddhism. The Degé here has lung bzhin while Stok Palace has lung gzhi. However, the Sanskrit makes it clear that Śroṇa understood the “four collections,” i.e. lung bzhi: āgamacatuṣṭayam adhītam*.
Tib. lan gcig phyir ’ong ba’i ’bras bu; Skt. sakṛdāgāmiphala. The second stage on the path to arhatship. This person will only be reborn once more in this world before achieving enlightenment.
Tib. bden pa rnams; Skt. satyāni. The four noble truths, viz., the universality of suffering, the cause of suffering, the truth that suffering can end, and the eightfold path that leads to nirvāṇa.
“The needy” (Tib. bkren pa; Skt. daridra). Note that this term can also imply “the hungry.” The translation here follows the Tibetan: bkren pa phal mo che zhig dbul bor. For comparison, the Sanskrit translates as “having made the needy not needy” (Skt. daridrān adaridrān krtvā).
Tib. phyir mi ’ong ba’i ’bras bu; Skt. anāgāmiphala. The third stage on the path to arhatship. Non-returners will not be reborn in this world; they will either attain arhatship in their present lifetime or they will be reborn in a heavenly realm where they will achieve their goal.
The rainy season lasted from June until October. Buddhist monks and nuns spent this time in retreat in one place. The month of Āṣāḍha (Tib. dbyar zla ’bring po) corresponds roughly to the latter part of June and the first part of July. See The Chapter on the Rains (Varṣāvastu, Toh 1-4) for more.
The translation here follows the Sanskrit (uddeśayogamanasikārān udgṛhya paryavāpya). The Tibetan, which is less specific, translates as “grasp this and that particular of attention and having mastered”: yid la byed pa’i khyad par de dang de dag bzung nas chub par byas te.
Where The Chapter on Leather reads generically “outstanding matters,” the Divyāvadāna spells out that this refers to sūtra, vinaya, and mātṛkā. Together, these two assemblies appear to represent gatherings for meditation and recitation (or “scriptural study”), respectively.
The first phrase of this paragraph (“As a rule,”) asserts that this tradition of two gatherings is universally observed by all buddhas, while the last line asserts that, naturally, it was also observed by the Buddha Śākyamuni’s immediate disciples.
The three realms of existence in saṃsāra: the desire realm (Skt. kāmadhātu), the form realm (Skt. rūpadhātu), and the formless realm (Skt. ārūpyadhātu).
In the following, Mahākātyāyana instructs Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa to ask the Buddha “five questions” (Tib. zhu ba lnga bo; Skt. pañca praśnāni) but the third of these questions is omitted in both the Sanskrit and Tibetan texts. While the third question is never explicitly stated in the text, the Buddha addresses five issues in his response to Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa, the third of which concerns sandals with lining. There on 1.180, the Buddha allows that sandals with a single lining but not a second or third lining may be kept and worn (Tib. mchil lham rim gcig pa bcang bar bya ste / rim gnyis pa ma yin / rim gsum pa ma yin no; Skt. ekapalāśike upānahe dhārayitavye na dvipuṭe na tripuṭe). The section in which the Buddha allows sandals with a single lining can be found on 1.275.
This refers presumably to the first of the thirty offenses requiring forfeiture (Skt. naiḥsargikāḥ pātayantikāḥ; Tib. spang ba’i ltung byed). The first of these offenses, abbreviated as Tib. gos ’chang ba; Skt. cīvara, deals with keeping cloth that is not one’s own for ten days or more. The relevant offense is given in The Prātimokṣa Sūtra, (Toh 2, F.8.a): Tib. dge slong chos gos zin pas sra brkyang phyung na / zhag bcu’i bar du gos lhag pa rnams par ma brtags pa bcang bar bya’o // de las ’das par bcangs na spang ba’i ltung byed do. The Sanskrit original reads Skt. niṣṭhitacīvareṇa bhikṣuṇā uddhṛte kaṭhine daśāhaparamaṃ atirekacīvaram avikalpitaṃ dhārayitavyaṃ tataḥ uttari dhārayen naisargikā pāyantikā.
Tib. ched du brjod pa; Skt. Udāna. For this work and the others chanted by Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa, see Lamotte 1988, 161–63.
This passage is a standard formula. It is abbreviated in the Skt. MS, but the full Sanskrit form can be supplied from a similar passage in the Divyāvadāna 156.13–15.
Also called Puṇḍavardhana, located in present-day West Bengal; see BHSD, p. 346; Rotman 2008, p. 400, n. 192.
This statement seems to imply the divine right of kings, i.e. that a king rules with the imprimatur of the gods and thus a king’s wishes are inviolable. See Rotman 2008, p. 400, n. 201, for the difference between the text in the Carmavastu and the Divyāvadāna; the statement is in the negative in the latter.
Before every monsoon, a monastery’s monk residence caretaker assigns dwellings (Tib. gnas khang) and bedding (Tib. mal cha) to the monks in order of seniority (as determined by date of ordination), starting with the preceptors and instructors; see The Chapter on the Rains Retreat (Toh 1-4), 1.17–1.26. Upananda is here described as “new,” that is, a new monk. In The Chapter on Going Forth, at the end of the ordination rite, monks are “enjoined to dwell in tranquility” with their monastic brothers. They are encouraged to respect the saṅgha’s hierarchy of seniority, which includes elders (Tib. gnas brtan; Skt. sthavira), those who are middling (Tib. bar ma; Skt. madhyama), and newcomers (Tib. gsar bu). Dwellings and their furnishings are the subject of The Chapters on Monastic Discipline’s fifteenth chapter, The Chapter on Dwellings and Seating. For a study and translation of the first half of this chapter into English, see Schopen 2000.
The Sanskrit term
A river at Śrāvastī.
One of the ascetic practices known as
A major śrāvaka disciple and personal attendant of the Buddha Śākyamuni during the last twenty-five years of his life. He was a cousin of the Buddha (according to the Mahāvastu, he was a son of Śuklodana, one of the brothers of King Śuddhodana, which means he was a brother of Devadatta; other sources say he was a son of Amṛtodana, another brother of King Śuddhodana, which means he would have been a brother of Aniruddha).
Ānanda, having always been in the Buddha’s presence, is said to have memorized all the teachings he heard and is celebrated for having recited all the Buddha’s teachings by memory at the first council of the Buddhist saṅgha, thus preserving the teachings after the Buddha’s parinirvāṇa. The phrase “Thus did I hear at one time,” found at the beginning of the sūtras, usually stands for his recitation of the teachings. He became a patriarch after the passing of Mahākāśyapa.
A wealthy merchant in the town of Śrāvastī, famous for his generosity to the poor, who became a patron of the Buddha Śākyamuni. He bought Prince Jeta’s Grove (Skt. Jetavana), to be the Buddha’s first monastery, a place where the monks could stay during the monsoon.
One of several types of footwear allowed for Buddhist monks in The Chapter on Leather.
Late June/early July.
One of twelve literary genres found in the Buddhist canon, avadānas (meaning “heroic acts” or “glorious exploits”) relate the past life actions which have culminated in a person’s present life attainments.
Monks who know how to make and repair leather footwear are allowed to keep an awl, a strap, and, according to some sources, a knife to assist them in these tasks.
A wealthy householder, father of Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa.
A denigratory way to refer to a Buddhist monk.
Site of the Kalandaka Sanctuary.
One of several types of footwear described in The Chapter on Leather.
One of several types of furniture allowed for Buddhist monks mentioned in The Chapter on Leather.
Sandals that resemble a bodhi leaf in shape. One of several types of footwear prohibited in The Chapter on Leather, along with creaking sandals, tinkling sandals, sparkling sandals, ram’s horn sandals, multicolored sandals, and sandals that cost five coins.
One of several types of footwear allowed for Buddhist monks in The Chapter on Leather.
A high-ranking deity presiding over a divine world; he is also considered to be the lord of the Sahā world (our universe). Though not considered a creator god in Buddhism, Brahmā occupies an important place as one of two gods (the other being Indra/Śakra) said to have first exhorted the Buddha Śākyamuni to teach the Dharma. The particular heavens found in the form realm over which Brahmā rules are often some of the most sought-after realms of higher rebirth in Buddhist literature. Since there are many universes or world systems, there are also multiple Brahmās presiding over them. His most frequent epithets are “Lord of the Sahā World” (sahāṃpati) and Great Brahmā (mahābrahman).
The term “breach” does not uniquely correspond to any of the five types of offense a monk should avoid. Instead, context determines which class of offense any specific breach belongs to. See Clarke 2021 p, 71 n. 80.
A calf- or thigh-high boot allowed for monks living in snowy regions. One of several types of footwear allowed for Buddhist monks in The Chapter on Leather.
Ancient capital of Aṅga.
One of several types of leather or hide used in ground-spreads and ground-spread covers in the frontier country of Aśmaka.
Perhaps onomatopoeic. Monks are not allowed to wear creaking sandals. One of several types of footwear prohibited in The Chapter on Leather, along with tinkling sandals, sparkling sandals, ram’s horn sandals, sandals like a bodhi leaf, multicolored sandals, and sandals that cost five coins.
An attendant to Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa, whose name means “servant.”
One of several types of leather or hide used in ground-spreads and ground-spread covers in the frontier country of Aśmaka.
In the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, the term dhyāna is used in a general sense to mean “meditation.” Note, however, that in Buddhist literature dhyāna often refers to specific meditative states involving increasing detachment from both sensory and mental objects.
In a Buddhist context, the term
To collect one’s attention and direct it to meditation.
The Mūlasarvāstivādin tradition grouped the Buddha’s early sūtra discourses into four divisions, or
The Sanskrit Chapter on Leather gives this location first in the probably erroneous form
Third stage on the path to becoming an arhat.
Second stage on the path to becoming an arhat.
First stage on the path to becoming an arhat.
A class of generally benevolent nonhuman beings who inhabit the skies, sometimes said to inhabit fantastic cities in the clouds, and more specifically to dwell on the eastern slopes of Mount Meru, where they are ruled by the Great King Dhṛtarāṣṭra. They are most renowned as celestial musicians who serve the gods. In the Abhidharma, the term is also used to refer to the mental body assumed by sentient beings during the intermediate state between death and rebirth. Gandharvas are said to live on fragrances (gandha) in the desire realm, hence the Tibetan translation dri za, meaning “scent eater.”
This is one of many related terms for an assembly hall that appear in the Kangyur and Tengyur, such as (1) “meditation residence” or “meditation hall” (Tib.
One of several types of leather or hide used in ground-spreads and ground-spread covers in the frontier country of Aśmaka.
In his Chinese translation of The Chapter on Leather, Yijing (T 1447, 1052b12) gives a single term,
In his Chinese translation of The Chapter on Leather, Yijing (T 1447, 1052b12) gives a single term,
In his Chinese translation of The Chapter on Leather, Yijing (T 1447, 1052b12) gives a single term,
In his Chinese translation of The Chapter on Leather, Yijing (T 1447, 1052b12) gives a single term,
A group of monks led by Nanda and Upananda who are consistently portrayed as indulgent and attached to material comforts. See the introduction to The Chapter on Leather.
In Buddhist cosmology, the Heaven of the Thirty-Three is the second lowest of the six heavens in the desire realm (kāmadhātu). Situated on the flat summit of Mount Sumeru, it lies above the Heaven of the Four Great Kings (Caturmahārājakāyika) and below the Yāma Heaven. It consists of thirty-three regions, each presided by one of thirty-three chief gods, and the overall ruler is Śakra. The presiding gods are divided into four groups named in the Abhidharmakośaṭīkā (Toh 4092): the eight gods of wealth, two Aśvin youths, eleven fierce ones, and twelve suns. The thirty-three regions themselves are enumerated and described in The Application of Mindfulness of the Sacred Dharma, Toh 287, 4.B.2 et seq.).
In a Buddhist context, the term
One of the five or six classes of sentient beings, into which beings are born as the karmic fruition of past miserliness. As the term in Sanskrit means “the departed,” they are analogous to the ancestral spirits of Vedic tradition, the pitṛs, who starve without the offerings of descendants. It is also commonly translated as “hungry ghost” or “starving spirit,” as in the Chinese 餓鬼 e gui.
They are sometimes said to reside in the realm of Yama, but are also frequently described as roaming charnel grounds and other inhospitable or frightening places along with piśācas and other such beings. They are particularly known to suffer from great hunger and thirst and the inability to acquire sustenance. Detailed descriptions of their realm and experience, including a list of the thirty-six classes of pretas, can be found in The Application of Mindfulness of the Sacred Dharma, Toh 287, 2.1281– 2.1482.
The lord of the Trāyastriṃśa heaven on the summit of Mount Sumeru. As one of the eight guardians of the directions, Indra guards the eastern quarter. In Buddhist sūtras, he is a disciple of the Buddha and protector of the Dharma and its practitioners. He is often referred to by the epithets Śatakratu, Śakra, and Kauśika.
The name of an island or group of islands where precious stones and gems were extraordinarily plentiful and easily obtained.
The name of the southern continent in Buddhist cosmology, which can signify either the known human world, or more specifically the Indian subcontinent, literally “the jambu island/continent.” Jambu is the name used for a range of plum-like fruits from trees belonging to the genus Szygium, particularly Szygium jambos and Szygium cumini, and it has commonly been rendered “rose apple,” although “black plum” may be a less misleading term. Among various explanations given for the continent being so named, one (in the Abhidharmakośa) is that a jambu tree grows in its northern mountains beside Lake Anavatapta, mythically considered the source of the four great rivers of India, and that the continent is therefore named from the tree or the fruit. Jambudvīpa has the Vajrāsana at its center and is the only continent upon which buddhas attain awakening.
This site derives its names from the birds whose chirping awoke King Bimbisāra and saved him from the bite of a deadly snake. In gratitude, the king forbade harming the birds in this park. The Sanskrit Chapter on a Schism in the Saṅgha identifies the kalandaka as a bird in its telling of the site’s origins (Toh 1-17, F.77.b–78.a). There, the Sanskrit glosses the site’s name as “the winged ones known as ‘kalandaka’ ”:
The Śākyan capital, home of the Bodhisattva before his renunciation.
Late October/Early November.
Prasenajit’s kingdom and later Virūḍhaka’s.
King of Vārāṇasī during the time of the Buddha Kāśyapa.
ko lpags kyi gzhi (Carmavastu). Toh 1-5, Degé Kangyur vol. 1 (’dul ba, ka), folios 251.b–277.b.
ko lpags kyi gzhi (Carmavastu). ka’ ’gyur (dpe bsdur ma) [Comparative Edition of the Kangyur], krung go’i bod rig pa zhib ’jug ste gnas kyi bka’ bstan dpe sdur khang (The Tibetan Tripitaka Collation Bureau of the China Tibetology Research Center). 108 volumes. Beijing: krung go’i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang (China Tibetology Publishing House), 2006–9, vol. 1, pp. 585–644.
ko lpags kyi gzhi. Stog Palace Kangyur vol. 2 (’dul ba, ka) folios 359–389.
Kalyāṇamitra. ’dul ba gzhi rgya cher ’grel ba (Vinayavastuṭīkā). Toh 4113, Degé Tengyur vol. 156 (’dul ba, tsu), folios 177.b–326.b.
Dutt, Nalinaksha, ed. Carmavastu of the Vinayavastvāgama of the Mūlasarvāstivādin. In Gilgit Manuscripts, Vol. III, part IV, pp. 159–210. Calcutta: Calcutta Oriental Press, 1950.
Tatelman, Joel. The Heavenly Exploits: Buddhist Biographies from the Divyāvadāna. New York: New York University Press, 2005.
Vira, Raghu and Lokesh Chandra. Gilgit Buddhist Manuscripts. Facsimile edition. New Delhi: 1959.
Allchin, F. Raymond and George Erdosy. The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia : the Emergence of Cities and States. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Anālayo, Bhikkhu. “Āgama and Aṅga in the Early Buddhist Oral Tradition.” Singaporean Journal of Buddhist Studies 3 (2016): 9–37.
Banerjee, Anukul Chandra. Sarvāstivāda Literature. World Press Private Ltd., 1979. Originally published in 1957.
Bhattacarya, Dipak. “The Vedic Dṛti as Skin Float: AVP 2.19.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 18, no. 3 (2008): 311–26.
Bronkhorst, Johannes. Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism. Brill, 2011.
Buswell, Robert E., Jr., and Donald S. Lopez, Jr. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Princeton University Press, 2014.
Clarke, Shayne (2014). Vinaya Texts. The International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University.
Clarke, Shayne (2015). “Vinayas.” Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, edited by Jonathan Silk et al., vol. 1., Literature and Languages. Brill, pp. 60–87.
Clarke, Shayne (2016–17). “Lost in Tibet, found in Bhutan: the unique nature of the Mūlasarvāstivādin law code for nuns.” Buddhism, Law & Society 2: 199–292.
Clarke, Shayne (2021). “On Some Curious Cases Where the Buddha Did Not Make a Rule: Palliative Care, Assisted Suicide, and Abortion in an Indian Buddhist Monastic Law Code.” International Journal of Buddhist Thought & Culture 31 (1): 13–113. https://doi.org/10.16893/IJBTC.2021.06.30.1.13.
Collett, A. (2006). “List-based Formulae in the Avadānaśataka.” Buddhist Studies Review 23 (2): 155–85.
Cowell, Edward B., and Robert Alexander Neil, eds. The Divyāvadāna: A Collection of Early Buddhist Legends. Oriental Press, 1970. Originally published in 1886 by Cambridge University Press.
Edgerton, Franklin. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary. 2 vols. Vol. 2, Dictionary. Munshiram Manoharlal, 2004.
Erdosy, George (1988). Urbanisation in Early Historic India. BAR Publishing.
Erdosy, George (1995). “City States of North India and Pakistan at the Time of the Buddha.” In The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia: the Emergence of Cities and States, edited by F. Raymond Allchin with George Erdosy, R. A. E. Coningham, D. K. Chakrabarti, and Bridget Allchin. Cambridge University Press.
Freiberger, Oliver. “Early Buddhism, Asceticism, and the Politics of the Middle Way.” In Asceticism and its Critics: Historical Accounts and Comparative Perspectives, edited by Oliver Freiberger. American Academy of Religion cultural criticism series. Oxford University Press, 2006.
Garfield, Jay. Buddhist Ethics: A Philosophical Exploration. Oxford University Press, 2021.
Hirakawa, Akira. History of Indian Buddhism: From Śākyamuni To Early Mahāyāna. Edited and translated by Paul Groner. University of Hawai’i Press, 1990.
Hofinger, M. Le congrès du lac Anavatapta (vies des saints bouddhiques): extrait du Vinaya des Mūlasarvāstivādin Bhaiṣajyavastu. Vol. 1. Légendes des anciens (Sthavirāvadāna). Institut Orientaliste, 1982.
Horner, Isaline Blew. The Book of the Discipline, Volume IV. Luzac & Company Ltd., 1962. First edition in 1951.
Jäschke, H. A Tibetan-English Dictionary. Curzon Press, 1998. Reprint of the edition published in London, 1881.
Kragh, U., ed. The Foundation for Yoga Practitioners: The Buddhist Yogācārabhūmi Treatise and Its Adaptation in India, East Asia, and Tibet. Harvard University, Department of South Asian Studies, 2013.
Lamotte, E. History of Indian Buddhism from the Origins to the Śaka Era. Translated by Sara Webb-Boin [sic]. Institut Orientaliste, 1988.
Law, Bimala Churn. Geography of Early Buddhism. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1932. Ebook accessed at “Ancient Buddhist Texts,” January 2024.
Malalasekera, G. Dictionary of Pali Proper Names. Buddhist Publication Society, 1937. Accessed October 1, 2021.
Monier-Williams, M. A Sanskrit-English Dictionary. Clarendon Press, 1979.
Oldenberg, Hermann, trans. (1879). The Vinaya Piṭakaṃ: One of the Principal Buddhist Holy Scriptures in the Pali Language. Vol. 1. The Mahāvagga. London: Williams and Norgate.
Oldenberg, Hermann, trans. (1882) Vinaya Texts. Part 2. The Mahāvagga, 5–10; The Cullavagga, 1–3. In The Sacred Books of the East, vol. 17, edited by F. Max Müller. Clarendon Press.
Olivelle, Patrick (2007). “Explorations in the Early History of Dharmaśāstra.” In Between the Empires: Society in India 300 bce to 400 ce. Oxford University Press.
Olivelle, Patrick. (2018). “Ascetics: vānaprastha, pravrajita.” In Hindu Law: A New History of Dharmaśāstra. Oxford University Press.
Panglung, J. Die Erzählstoffe des Mūlasarvāstivāda-Vinaya analysiert auf Grund der tibetischen Übersetzung. Tokyo: Reiyukai Library, 1981.
Prebish, C. A Survey of Vinaya Literature. Jin Luen Publishing House, 1994.
Roach, Susan. “ ‘The Qualities of the Purified’: Attitudes Towards the Dhūtaguṇas in the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya.” PhD diss., SOAS, University of London, 2020. [Available as PDF on academia.edu.]
Rotman, Andy (2008). Divine Stories: Divyāvadāna Part 1. Wisdom Publications, 2008.
Rotman, Andy (2021). Hungry Ghosts. Wisdom Publications, 2021.
Schopen, Gregory. (2000) “Hierarchy and Housing in a Buddhist Monastic Code: A Translation of the Sanskrit text of the Śayanāsanavastu of the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya. Part One.” Journal of Buddhist Literature vol. 2: 92–196.
Schopen, Gregory (2006). “A Well-Sanitized Shroud: Asceticism and Institutional Values in the Middle Period of Buddhist Monasticism.” In Between the Empires: Society in India 300 bce to 400 ce, edited by Patrick Olivelle. Oxford University Press.
Schopen, Gregory (2014). “The Learned Monk as a Comic Figure: On Reading a Buddhist Vinaya as Indian Literature.” In Buddhist Nuns, Monks, and Other Worldly Matters. University of Hawai’i Press.
Schopen, Gregory (2015). “The Fragrance of the Buddha, the Scent of Monuments, and the Odor of Images in Early India.” In Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême Orient, vol. 101: 11–30.
Schopen, Gregory (2022). “The Monk Mūlaphalguna and the Nuns: Biography as Criticism.” Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies 5.1: 313–33.
Skorupski, T. A Catalogue of the Stog Palace Kanjur. Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1985.
Strauch, Ingo. “Lost in Translation? Canonical Languages and Linguistic Diversity of Early Versions of the Prātimokṣasūtra.” In Evolution of Scriptures, Formation of Canons: The Buddhist Case, edited by Orna Almogi. Indian and Tibetan Studies Series 13. Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, Universität Hamburg, 2022.
Wörterbuch der tibetischen Schriftsprache. Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Kommission beim Verlag C. H. Beck, 2005.
BHSD Edgerton, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary
Degé Degé Kangyur
Divyāvadāna Cowell
GBM III Dutt’s Gilgit Buddhist Manuscripts, Vol. III
MW Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary
Stok Palace Tog Palace manuscript of the Tibetan Kanjur
WTSS Wörterbuch der tibetischen Schriftsprache
The Chapter on Leather is the fifth chapter of The Chapters on Monastic Discipline, which has seventeen chapters in all. In the preceding three chapters of The Chapters on Monastic Discipline, the rules, rites, and procedures needed to establish and maintain a Buddhist monastic community are introduced. The present chapter opens with a narrative set in a border region beyond the Buddhist heartland. This story, which is also found in the Divyāvadāna, depicts Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa delivering an epistle from his teacher Mahākātyāyana in south India to the Buddha in north India. In his message, the venerable Mahākātyāyana conveys five difficulties faced by monastic communities in far-flung places where local conditions and customs differ from those in the central Buddhist lands of Magadha, Kośala, and the Vṛji Republic. In response, the Buddha relaxes the rules for monks living in such places to allow that (1) ordination in border regions may be done by a group of five monks that includes a vinaya holder; (2) monks may bathe regularly; (3) sandals with a single lining may be kept and worn; (4) leather ground-spreads and ground-spread covers may be used; and (5) no one is at fault if the robes sent by a monk to another monk are lost on the way. This chapter is also the first of five chapters in The Chapters on Monastic Discipline that contain the Buddha’s detailed rulings on acceptable forms of material support—necessities of clothing, food, medicine, and shelter—allowed for monks. In this, The Chapter on Leather, the Buddha also relaxes rules governing the use of beds, seats, carriages, sandals, etc., to allow the use of some conveniences for the ill, the elderly, and those otherwise unable to manage.
This text was translated by Cuilan Liu, Jamyang Rinchen, Andy Francis, and Sue Roach. The introduction was written by Bob Miller and Sue Roach. Thanks to Shayne Clarke for commenting on a draft of the introduction.
The translation was completed under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha. Bob Miller edited the translation and the introduction, and Ven. Konchog Norbu copyedited the text. Martina Cotter was in charge of the digital publication process.
The translation of this text has been made possible through the generous sponsorship of Xun Wang, Kebin Wang, Xiaojuan Dang, and Ziqing Xu.
In The Chapter on Cloth, the Buddha explains that wearing hides is prohibited because doing so is “a badge of the non-Buddhist.” Some non-Buddhist renunciants were known for wearing animal hides; it was, in a sense, their trademark. And therefore, so as not to be confused with them, Buddhist monks should not wear animal hides. This ruling in The Chapter on Cloth suggests that monks’ robes were a type of uniform that marked the wearer and symbolically communicated their sectarian identity as Buddhist monks.
A different concern is in evidence in The Chapter on Leather’s stories and rules, though: adapting monastic rules to ease life for monks living beyond the Buddhist heartland. As the Buddhist saṅgha grew in the centuries before the Common Era, monks took up residence in different parts of India. Customs and material goods, along with the flora and the fauna, differed from those in the countries or “city-states” of Magadha, Kośala, Kāśī, Vatsa, and the Vṛji Republic, where the Buddhist saṅgha first emerged and flourished. In such different circumstances, adhering to the monastic rules was not always practicable, prompting Buddhist monks living in these areas to seek special dispensations or allowances. The frame narrative of The Chapter on Leather is set in one of these diaspora communities in the frontier country of Aśmaka.
In Aśmaka, the venerable Mahākātyāyana reports, cattle trample the earth, leaving the ground rough and rocky, so the people sit on ground-spreads and ground-spread covers made from sheepskin, cowhide, deerskin, and goatskin, whereas in other places in India the people usually sit on seats made of wool, tree bark, cotton, or a cotton-wool mix. The venerable Mahākātyāyana is concerned because, when he and his students are invited into patrons’ homes and offered a seat, they are invariably offered a seat made of leather. And yet they are obliged to refuse, since the Buddha had not allowed it. Since the venerable Mahākātyāyana does not cite a specific prohibition, we are left to speculate as to the exact reasons for his misgivings. In the context of the frame story, when the Buddha allows monks in border regions to sit on leather seats, bathe daily, and wear sandals with one lining all in one fell swoop, he seems to adopt a pragmatic stance in allowing these conveniences, which do not grossly transgress Buddhist principles of nonharming and compassion.
The most significant new adaptation adopted at Mahākātyāyana’s behest was the relaxation of rules for ordaining monks in border regions, which is why this initial story is summarized under the heading “Ordination by Five” in the chapter’s first summary. For the present-day ordination rite prescribed by the Buddha, a quorum of ten monks is needed. Here, the Buddha allows that a quorum of five monks (in which the fifth is a vinaya holder) will suffice to ordain monks in border regions like Aśmaka. This consequential amendment to the community’s primary gatekeeping institution made it much easier to ordain new monks in the outlying kingdoms and city-states in which Buddhist monks increasingly found themselves in the centuries before and after the start of the Common Era.
Allowing ordination by five in border regions necessitated an official demarcation of center and periphery, so that monks would know where exactly a quorum of five would suffice for ordaining a new member. In The Chapter on Leather, the Buddha establishes the borders of the Buddhist heartland or “Center” as extending, in modern geopolitical terms, as far east as Bengal, as far south as the Deccan, as far west as Delhi and Thanesar, and as far north as Uttarakhand. Beyond lay the frontier regions, where Buddhist monks lived, initially at least, only in small numbers.
The remaining stories in The Chapter on Leather fall into two types: (1) those in which Upananda alone or all members of the group of six take an allowance to such ostentatious lengths that the Buddha is forced to restrict it, and (2) those that feature other, mostly nameless and blameless monks whose struggles to cope with the ascetic life prompt the Buddha to relax the rules and allow conveniences. In stories of the second type, hardships posed by the physical environment, rather than wayward monks, prompt new allowances from the Buddha, such as when monks stub their toes and scrape their heels climbing Vulture Peak Mountain and the Buddha allows toe and heel covers.
In a recent article, Schopen succinctly identifies the two kinds of protagonist one tends to see in the canonical vinayas: “Most of the monks that cause trouble in vinaya texts are either nameless or members of the Group-of-Six.” Regarding Upananda and his band, Schopen notes that “each member of the Group [of Six] appears to be a literary creation meant to embody or stand for one or another common monastic failing or fault.” Upananda, for instance, personifies greed, as evidenced by the size of his estate at death. He appears so frequently in the canonical vinayas, Schopen observes, that he “may be one of the most fully developed characters in all of Indian literature.” In one of his more famous pieces, “The Learned Monk as a Comic Figure,” Schopen discusses passages that satirize Upananda and the group of six as greedy gluttons. The humor with which their transgressive antics are depicted evinces, Schopen argues, a familiarity with Indian drama on the part of the compilers of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya.
Here, in The Chapter on Leather, Upananda and the group of six’s indulgent tendencies are sometimes juxtaposed against the restraint shown by monks committed to the “practices of the austere.” Monks who engage in these practices live with only the barest of supports. Though austere, these practices are nevertheless sanctioned by the Buddha and thus demarcate the outer boundary of accepted Buddhist ascetic practice.
Narratively, then, the members of the group of six and their ascetic, forest-dwelling counterparts function as tropes in these stories, employed by the compilers as personifications of indulgence on the one hand and strict but acceptable asceticism on the other. The Bodhisattva, in his pursuit of awakening, famously rejected the more extreme forms of asceticism practiced by his contemporaries. In the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, this turning point is retold in The Chapter on Schisms in the Saṅgha, the seventeenth and final chapter of this text. There, the Buddha-to-be sits in a charnel ground, poked and prodded by children from the village who cannot tell whether he is dead or alive. Reflecting on the hardships he has endured and the fruits they bore, he concludes that the mortifying disciplines he has learned are not conducive to awakening. He wonders what kind of practice might suffice when suddenly he remembers a childhood experience of ease, felt while seated underneath a rose-apple tree in his father’s fields:
“When I was living in the house of my father, the Śākyan Śuddhodana, I followed him to the fields he tilled and sat down in the shade of a rose-apple tree. There, free of desire, wrongdoing, and nonvirtue, I remember attaining the first dhyāna, which is endowed with thought, reflection, and the pleasure and ease born of solitude. That is the path. That is the practice. It enables knowledge, enables seeing, and enables unsurpassed, complete awakening, but it will not be easy for me, who has grown emaciated and weak, to cultivate that. I should inhale at ease and exhale at ease; I should take coarse porridge and gruel as food, massage my body with ghee and sesame oil, and bathe in soft water.”
Of course, Buddhist monks were not to take such accounts as license to do as they pleased. Again and again, in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya in general and this chapter in particular, those who freely indulge their whims and pleasures are censured by brahmins and prominent householders and accused of being “obsessed with sense pleasures.” Inevitably, these accusations prompt new rules, with which the monastic “middle way” between indulgence and self-mortification is further defined. Stories featuring Upananda and the rest of the group of six can be found under the headings “Wide Beds,” “Carriage,” “Swimming,” “Cow’s Tail,” “Inappropriate Motifs,” “Allow to Protect,” and “Lace Up Crosswise.”
The sequence of stories and rulings in The Chapter on Leather well demonstrates how the Vinaya is “reactive” in its rulemaking. Rules are modified in response to different circumstances, either relaxed on compassionately pragmatic grounds or restricted to rein in indulgence. For example:
• The Buddha prohibits high and wide seats, then allows monks to sit on them, but only in the home of a householder.
• The Buddha prohibits monks from traveling by carriage, then allows the ill and elderly to do so.
• Monks may not swim, but they may learn how.
• Monks may not touch women, but they may rescue a woman who is drowning in a river.
• Monks may not use leather items, but they may hold on to an animal’s tail when crossing a river, and they may keep an animal bladder as a floatation aid for crossing rivers.
• Monks may not wear wooden sandals, except inside a householder’s home at the householder’s request. If laypeople offer wooden sandals, they should be accepted.
• The Buddha allows monks to wear rope sandals after monks develop sores from sandals made of bamboo leaves and muñja grass.
• The Buddha prohibits sandals with multiple linings but then allows them when donated by a householder who has already used them.
The Chapter on Leather features stories with two monks named Śroṇa. The second of these, Śroṇa Koṭīviṃśa, is the main protagonist of a short but fascinating narrative included in the second summary. Śroṇa Koṭīviṃśa, known as Soṇa-Koḷiviśa Thera in the Pali Vinaya, was the son of a wealthy merchant from Campā. His privileged background is apparent on the soles of his feet, from which grow long golden hairs as a result of being carried everywhere. The group of six taunt him for being so coddled and express doubt about whether he will be able to exert the effort needed to progress in the Buddha’s teaching. Śroṇa Koṭīviṃśa, hearing their taunts, refuses to be discouraged and seeks out Ānanda, asking how a determined person might remain in absorption on the teaching. When Ānanda tells him it is through walking, Śroṇa Koṭīviṃśa practices walking meditation with such zeal that his feet bleed. The Buddha, having compassion for him, allows Śroṇa Koṭīviṃśa to put a lining in his sandals to protect his feet. But Śroṇa Koṭīviṃśa refuses the preferential treatment and agrees to wear sandals with one lining only if all monks are allowed to do so, a condition the Buddha then grants.
The second Śroṇa is Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa, whose avadāna provides the frame story for Mahākātyāyana and his five-point epistle to the Buddha, discussed above. Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s avadāna is the second of several avadānas extracted from The Chapters on Monastic Discipline for the Divyāvadāna collection. The Sanskrit word avadāna refers to one of nine or twelve genres used to classify the Buddha’s early teachings. In the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, avadānas narrate the “karmic history” of their subjects’ accomplishments, both on the Buddhist path and in the world. The subject of an avadāna is typically one of the Buddha’s close disciples or a notable lay follower. Furthermore, according to Andy Rotman, avadānas follow a tripartite structure that consists of: (1) a story in the present tense in which characters discover the benefits of Buddhist practice and meet the Buddha; (2) a story of the past detailing the deeds done by those characters in a previous lifetime that have now come to karmic fruition; and (3) a juncture at which time the Buddha—who is quite literally an “omniscient narrator”—identifies the characters in the story of the past with those in the story of the present.
The story of Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa here follows that threefold structure. The narrative begins in the “present” (i.e., the Buddha’s time) in the village of Vāsava in the frontier country of Aśmaka, in south India, where Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa grows up in luxury. Before he squanders his family fortune, his father sends him out as a caravan leader to the Isle of Jewels to collect the island’s titular bounty. But, on their return to India, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa is separated from his companions and stumbles upon a city of hungry ghosts. Unable to resist the urge to enter, he wanders the city for twelve years, encountering various hungry ghosts, from whom he learns of a great Buddhist monk named Mahākātyāyana.
On his return to the country of Aśmaka, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa seeks out the venerable Mahākātyāyana and requests permission to go forth, and be ordained as a monk. But the venerable Mahākātyāyana urges him to deliver the messages he received from the hungry ghosts first. Once he has done so, the venerable Mahākātyāyana allows Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa to go forth. But he must wait to be ordained as a monk until Mahākātyāyana can gather the necessary ten monks, which is difficult given the paucity of monks in that border region of south India. Mahākātyāyana’s students spend the three months of rains scattered about in different places, practicing yoga (i.e., meditation) and receiving instruction. After the rains, Mahākātyāyana’s many students come to see their teacher to resolve their outstanding questions. Through this process, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa attains arhatship and is ordained as a monk by Mahākātyāyana and a gathering of ten.
Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa then seeks permission to see and serve the Buddha in person, which Mahākātyāyana grants. It is then that the venerable Mahākātyāyana charges Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa with delivering his epistle to the Buddha, informing the Blessed One of five issues that monks face in the south of India. In response to these concerns, the Buddha allows that (1) ordination in border regions may be done by a group of five monks that includes a vinaya holder; (2) monks may bathe regularly; (3) sandals with a single lining may be kept and worn; (4) leather ground-spreads and ground-spread covers may be kept; and (5) no one is at fault if the robes sent by a monk to another monk are lost on the way.
The Buddha then narrates a story of the past about a merchant who took care of a stūpa dedicated to the Buddha Kāśyapa and made the aspiration to be reborn into a rich family and attain the Dharma. Finally, the “juncture,” or narrative denouement, is reached with the Buddha’s identification of the merchant with Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa.
Embedded in Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s story are a series of shorter avadānas or “karmic histories” revealing what each of the hungry ghosts did in his or her former life that led to their rebirth in one of the lower realms of existence. The repetition found in these stories serves to reinforce the underlying principle of karmic cause and effect, which the Buddha sums up at the end of Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s avadāna:
“The ripened fruits of wholly negative actions are wholly negative, while the ripened fruits of wholly positive actions are wholly positive, and the ripened fruits of of mixed actions are mixed. Monks, therefore abandon wholly negative and mixed actions, and seek wholly positive actions. Monks, this is how you should train.”
The Mūlasarvāstivādin Chapter on Leather has survived in at least three languages: Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan. The Sanskrit original was discovered in Gilgit (in present-day northern Kashmir) in the 1930s. The Sanskrit manuscript is fragmentary, with approximately 20 percent of the text missing. The manuscript itself dates to around the sixth to the seventh century, which is probably two to three centuries after the redaction of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya closed around the fourth or fifth century. These manuscripts are available in a textual edition published by Nalinaksha Dutt. Facsimiles of the manuscripts are included in Vinaya Texts, edited by Shayne Clarke, along with an excellent introduction, bibliography, and textual concordance.
The present translation of The Chapter on Leather is based on the Tibetan translation in the Degé Kangyur, with reference to the Stok Palace recension where Degé is unclear. The Tibetan translation of a Sanskrit Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya was made around the first decade of the ninth century. It is assumed to be complete, with some caveats.
We have also consulted the Chinese translation carried out by Yijing (635–713
A parallel to the Mūlasarvāstivādin Chapter on Leather is found in the Cammakkhandaka of the Pali Vinaya of the Theravādins. In the Pali language account, the order of the two Śroṇas is reversed. The Pali version opens with the story of Śroṇa (Soṇa Koḷivisa) and his bleeding feet, with a much-abbreviated account of Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s questions occurring toward the end of the chapter. For an overview of monastic footwear from India to China, see Ann Heirman’s article (2016) Shoes in Buddhist Monasteries from India to China: From Practical Attire to Symbol.
A summary of The Chapter on Leather:
The Blessed Buddha was staying in Prince Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍada’s Park. At that time, in a village called Vāsava in the frontier country of Aśmaka, there was a householder named Balasena who was rich, wealthy, and prosperous, with vast and extensive holdings, who possessed the wealth of Vaiśravaṇa, whose wealth rivaled that of Vaiśravaṇa. Having taken a wife of equal caste, he frolicked, took pleasure, and made love with her. But although he frolicked, took pleasure, and made love with her, they produced neither son nor daughter. With his hand pressed to his cheek, he lamented, “I have accumulated all this wealth for the household, and yet I have neither son nor daughter. And so, since I have no heir, all of my possessions will be appropriated by the king upon my death.” He sat there, brooding.
His loved ones, relatives, and friends asked, “Why are you brooding? Pray to the gods! Then you will have a son.”
Having considered it, he thought, “They’re right. Very well then, I’ll pray to the gods for a son.” So, childless and out of deep longing for a son, he prayed to gods such as Śiva, Varuṇa, Kubera, Śakra, and Brahmā, and then supplicated the god of the park, the god of the forest, the god of the crossroads, the god at the junction of three roads, the god who accepts oblations, as well as his hereditary god, who shared his Dharma and was always connected to him.
It is popularly said that sons and daughters are born as the result of such prayers. But this is not the case. If it were the case, then it would be so for everyone, and, for example, everyone would have a thousand sons like a universal monarch. Instead, when three conditions are present, sons and daughters are born. What three conditions? The father and mother, feeling passion, have intercourse; the mother is healthy and ovulating; and a gandharva is nearby. When these three conditions are present, sons and daughters are born.
As Balasena sat making such earnest entreaties, a being in its last existence who was seeking a host, who had grasped the essence of liberation, who had turned toward nirvāṇa, who had turned away from saṃsāra, who did not seek birth and death in any kind of conditioned existence, and who was taking its last body, died in the realm of the gods and entered the womb of Balasena’s wife.
Some women wise in nature possess five distinctive characteristics. What are the five? She knows when a man is in the grip of desire and she knows when his desire has abated; she knows when the time is right and knows her menstrual cycle; she knows when a being has entered her womb; she knows where the being in her womb has come from; and she knows if it is a boy and knows if it is a girl. If it will be a boy, it settles and rests on the right side of the belly. If it is a girl, it settles and rests on the left side of the belly.
Glad and delighted, she said to her husband, “Son of a noble one, take joy in our fortune! For I am pregnant, and since the child has settled and is resting on the right side of my belly, there is no doubt that it will be a boy.”
Glad and delighted too, he was inspired to speak these inspired words: “May I see the face of the son I have long wished for! May he be in harmony with me and not in conflict with me! May he carry out my duties! May he, having been supported by me, support me in return! May he enjoy his inheritance! May he secure the family line for a long time! When we are dead and the time is right, may he offer donations, whether few or many. When he has made merit, may he assign the reward in our names, saying, ‘Wherever those two have been reborn, may this go there and follow them!’ ”
Upon learning that a being had entered his wife’s womb, Balasena installed her in the upper story of their mansion and, to ensure that the being in her womb would reach full term, he provided her with what was needed for the cold when it was cold and what was needed for the heat when it was hot. On the doctor’s advice, her food was not to be too bitter, too sour, too salty, too sweet, too spicy, or too astringent; and so she was given food that was devoid of bitterness, sourness, sweetness, spiciness, and astringency. With her body adorned with necklaces and strings of pearls, she was moved from bed to bed, from seat to seat, without touching the floor, like an apsarā floating through a pleasure grove, with Balasena seeing that she did not even hear the slightest of unpleasant sounds.
After eight or nine months had passed, she gave birth to a boy who was well formed, pleasing to the eye, handsome, with a golden complexion, a parasol-shaped head, long arms, a large and broad brow, eyebrows that met in the middle, a high-bridged nose, and a jewel-encrusted earring in one ear.
The householder Balasena summoned each and every appraiser of jewels who lived in the village of Vāsava to examine the jewel and said to them, “Gentlemen, determine the value of this jewel.”
They said, “We cannot determine the value of this jewel.”
Customarily, when the value of a jewel cannot be determined, it is valued at ten million. So they said, “Householder, this jewel is worth ten million.”
His relatives gathered, and for three weeks—twenty-one days—they held a great celebratory feast for the newborn to name him.
“Gentlemen, what name should we give the boy?”
His friends replied, “Since he was born under the constellation of Śravaṇa, and with an earring embellished with a jewel worth ten million in one ear, the boy’s name should be Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa (Born Under Śravaṇa with an Ear Worth Ten Million).” So he was named Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa.
On the very day that Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa was born, two sons were born to servants of the householder Balasena. They named one Dāsaka (Servant) and named the other Pālaka (Protector).
Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa was entrusted to eight nurses—two nurses to cuddle him, two nurses to breastfeed him, two nurses to clean him, and two nurses to play with him as companions. Nourished and fortified by the best of the best milk, yogurt, fresh butter, clarified butter, cream, and other special provisions given to him by these eight nurses, he grew quickly like a lotus in a lake.
When he grew up, he was entrusted to tutors in letters and numbers; in how to calculate and how to reckon by hand; in yields, deposits, entrustments, and withdrawals; and in the appraisal of land, the appraisal of cloth, the appraisal of jewels, the appraisal of elephants, the appraisal of horses, the appraisal of women, the appraisal of men, and the appraisal of wood. He perfected and discerned those eight appraisals and became expert in reading.
His father built for him three residences—one each for winter, spring, and summer. And, after also having three pleasure gardens constructed—one each for winter, spring, and summer—Balasena arranged three wives for Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa: an elder, middle, and junior. There, on the upper stories of his mansions, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa frolicked, took pleasure, and made love with his wives, to the accompaniment of music played by female musicians.
Meanwhile, the householder Balasena was always working hard at his farming. Seeing his father always working hard at his farming, Śroṇa asked him, “Father, why are you always working hard at your farming?”
“Son,” he replied, “if I frolicked, took pleasure, and made love on the upper story of the mansion, to the accompaniment of music played by female musicians, as you do, before long our wealth would dwindle, and then be exhausted and spent.”
“If that is the case, Father, I shall take some goods and go abroad,” he replied.
“Son, I have such jewels that even if you were to use them as you do sesame seeds, rice, jujube berries, or peas, the jewels I possess would not be exhausted.”
“Father, I shall take some goods and go abroad,” he said again and again.
Realizing that his son was determined, the householder Balasena granted his permission.
Balasena announced to the village of Vāsava, “Merchant gentlemen residing in the village of Vāsava, listen! Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa will take to the great sea, so whoever among you gentlemen would like to take to the great sea together with Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa—with a pilot, free of tariff, with no need for fare, with no need for tolls—pack your merchandise for a voyage on the great sea.” Five hundred merchants then readied their merchandise for the voyage on the great sea.
The householder Balasena invited the five hundred merchants to a feast in his own home and, having offered them a meal, said, “Listen, merchant gentlemen! As Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa is my son, he is yours, too. So may you dispel dangers and furnish assistance to him.”
“Master, we will do as you say,” the merchants said, heeding the householder Balasena.
The householder Balasena then said to Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa, “Son, just as you would listen to and carry out what I say, you should listen to and carry out what these five hundred merchants say.”
The householder Balasena reflected, “On what sort of mount should I send Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa?” He thought, “If one rides on an elephant while traveling, an elephant can be hard to maintain and hard to support. A horse is also hard to maintain and hard to support. Since a donkey is easy to feed and has a good memory, I will send him on a donkey.”
He then said to him, “Son, do not travel at the front or at the rear of the party. If a bandit is strong, he will attack the front of the caravan. If he is weak, he will attack the rear of the caravan. So you should travel in the middle of the merchants, for it is said that if the caravan leader is lost, the caravan will be lost.”
To Dāsaka and Pālaka he said, “On no account whatsoever should the two of you leave Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa behind!”
Later on, after performing the rituals for an auspicious, fortunate, and successful journey, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa went to his mother and said, “Mother, I’ve come to pay my respects, for I am setting off for the great sea.”
She began to cry, and he asked, “Why are you weeping, Mother?”
His mother continued crying as she said, “Son, I wonder whether I will ever see you again alive!”
He reflected, “I have performed the ritual for good fortune, but now she speaks so inauspiciously just as I’m leaving.” Irritated, he said, “Can you not see the miserable realms?”
“Son,” she said, “you speak harshly. Confess your transgression as a transgression, then its karma will dwindle, and be exhausted and spent.”
Confessing his transgression as a transgression, he asked her forgiveness.
Then, having performed the rituals for an auspicious, fortunate, and successful journey, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa packed many goods into carts, loads, sacks, and baskets, and onto camels, oxen, and donkeys, and set out for the great sea. Gradually passing through towns, cities, suburbs, and marketplaces, they arrived at the shore of the great sea, where they procured a large and splendid seafaring ship, in which they took to the great sea to procure wealth. Driven by a favorable wind, they reached the Isle of Jewels. After searching here and there, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa filled the great ship with jewels as if they were sesame seeds, grains, jujube berries, and kulattha peas. Driven by a favorable wind, the great ship returned to Jambudvīpa without mishap, and the merchants set up camp on the shore of the sea.
Śṛoṇa Koṭīkarṇa took Dāsaka and Pālaka off to one side away from the caravan and began to calculate income and expenses. Sometime later, he said to Dāsaka, “Dāsaka, see what the merchants are doing.” After he went there and saw that the merchants were sleeping, he lay down to sleep there too.
When Dāsaka had been gone for a long time, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa said to Pālaka, “Pālaka, see what the merchants are doing.” After he went there and saw that the merchants were loading the pack animals, he began loading the pack animals too.
Dāsaka thought, “I’m sure Pālaka will send for the caravan leader.”
Pālaka thought, “I’m sure Dāsaka will send for the caravan leader.”
After loading the pack animals, the merchants set off.
Meanwhile, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa, having grown drowsy, fell asleep.
After setting out and traveling until daybreak, the merchants asked, “Gentlemen, where is the caravan leader?”
“The caravan leader has gone to the front.”
They went to the front and asked, “Where is the caravan leader?”
“He went to the rear.”
They went to the rear and asked, “Where is the caravan leader?”
“He went to the middle.”
They went to the middle and again asked, but he did not appear to be anywhere.
Dāsaka said, “My thought was that Pālaka would surely send for the caravan leader.”
Pālaka said, “My thought was that Dāsaka would surely send for the caravan leader. Gentlemen, in any event, we have left the caravan leader behind and that is not good, so come, let us go back!”
“Gentlemen,” they said, “if we turn back, we will suffer all manner of misfortune, so come, let us just make a pact that, until our goods are stored away, on no account is anyone to inform Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s parents.” Having made such a pact, they carried on.
Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s parents, hearing that Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa was coming, went to welcome him.
“Where is the caravan leader?”
“He has gone to the front.”
They went to the front and asked, “Where is the caravan leader?”
“He went to the rear.”
They went to the rear and asked, “Where is the caravan leader?”
“He went to the middle.”
They confused the couple until the goods were stored away and then said, “Father, mother, we forgot the caravan leader.”
Later, someone came to the parents and said, “Father, mother, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa has come!” The parents gave him a reward and went to welcome Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa, but did not see him. Yet another person came and said, “Father, mother, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa has come!” They gave him a reward and went to welcome their son but saw no sign of him. Thus they came to trust no one.
In gardens, temples, and pavilions they placed parasols, bells, and fans on which they wrote, “If Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa still lives, may he quickly return, may he swiftly return! If he has passed away and gone to another life, may he be reborn into an exceptional life.” The couple went blind from grief and sobbing.
Meanwhile, when Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa woke up at sunrise, touched by the sun’s rays, he saw just two donkeys and not a single merchant there. He yoked and drove the two donkeys onward. As they went along, a wind blew up and covered the path with sand. Since the donkeys could remember the way, sniffing at the path, they proceeded slowly along. But when he hit and drove them with his spiked rod, he disturbed their memory and they strayed from the path into a forest of śāla trees.
When he saw the two donkeys overcome by thirst, tongues hanging out, both confused, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa felt compassion. He thought, “If I don’t set them free, they shall suffer all manner of misfortune with me.”
So he freed them both and walked on until he saw a high and broad city of iron, at the gate of which stood a man, dark black, intimidating, fierce, red eyed, with a massive body, holding an iron club in his hand. Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa approached him and said, “Hey, my good man! Is there any water here?”
He just stood there silently, without saying a word.
Śroṇa asked again, “Hey, my good man! Is there any water here?”
But the man still stood there silently, without saying a word.
Śroṇa entered the city, calling out, “Water! Water!” whereupon he was surrounded by many hundreds of thousands of hungry ghosts with bodies resembling scorched posts, bone contraptions draped with head and body hair, with stomachs resembling mountains, and mouths like the eye of a needle.
“O Śroṇa, you are compassionate!” they said. “We are thirsty. Pour us some water.”
“Gentlemen,” he replied, “I too am looking for water. Where is there water that I can give you?”
“Śroṇa, where would there be water in this city of hungry ghosts?” they said. “In the past twelve years, only today have we heard the words ‘water, water.’ ”
“Gentlemen, who are you and what deed caused you to be born here?”
“Śroṇa, the people of Jambudvīpa are skeptical, so you won’t believe us.”
“Gentlemen, how could I not believe you when I can see you with my own eyes?”
Then they uttered this verse:
“Śroṇa, you possess very powerful merit, so go! Have you seen anyone at all who has entered a city of hungry ghosts and left it alive?”
He departed, and when he saw the man he said to him, “Alas, my friend! Had you informed me that this is a city of hungry ghosts, I would not have entered it.”
The man replied, “Śroṇa, you possess very powerful merit, so go! Have you seen anyone at all who has entered a city of hungry ghosts and left it alive?”
Some time after he departed, Śroṇa saw another high and broad city of iron, at the gate of which stood a man, dark black, intimidating, fierce, red eyed, with a massive body, holding an iron club in his hand . He approached the man and said “Hey, my good man! Is there any water here?”
He just stood there, without saying a word.
“Hey, my good man! Is there any water here?” he asked again.
But the man still stood there, without saying a word.
Śroṇa entered the city, calling out, “Water! Water!” whereupon he was surrounded by many hundreds of thousands of hungry ghosts with bodies resembling scorched posts, bone contraptions draped with head and body hair, with stomachs resembling mountains, and mouths like the eye of a needle.
“O Śroṇa, you are compassionate!” they said. “We are thirsty. Pour us some water.”
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I too am looking for water. Where is there water that I can give you?”
“Śroṇa, where would there be water in this city of hungry ghosts?” they said. “In the past twelve years, only today have we heard the words ‘water, water’ from you.”
“Gentlemen, who are you and what deed caused you to be born here?”
They replied, “Śroṇa, the people of Jambudvīpa are skeptical, so you won’t believe us.”
“Gentlemen, how can I not believe you when I can see you with my own eyes?”
Then they uttered this verse:
“Śroṇa, you possess very powerful merit, so go! Have you seen anyone at all who has entered a city of hungry ghosts and left it alive?”
He departed, and when he saw the man he said to him, “Alas, my friend! If you had informed me that this is a city of hungry ghosts, I would not have entered it.”
The man replied, “Śroṇa, you possess very powerful merit, so go! Have you seen anyone at all who has entered a city of hungry ghosts and left it alive?”
He departed and some time later, when the sun was setting, he saw a heavenly palace. In it there were four well-formed apsarā nymphs, beautiful and pleasing to the eye, and a well-formed man, handsome and pleasing to the eye, who was adorned with armlets, earrings, bracelets, perfumes, and all kinds of garlands. Alone, he played with, took pleasure in, and amused the apsarā nymphs.
Seeing him while he was still far away, they each began to call out, “Welcome, Śroṇa! Are you not thirsty? Are you not hungry?”
Thinking, “Without a doubt they are gods, or nāgas, or yakṣas,” he replied, “I am thirsty. I am hungry.”
They bathed him and gave him food, and he remained in the heavenly palace until the sun was about to rise. They said to him, “Śroṇa, it will be miserable here, so leave.”
Śroṇa left, went a short distance in one direction, and waited. Then, later, when the sun rose, the heavenly palace vanished. The apsarā nymphs vanished too. A pack of four piebald dogs appeared. They knocked the man over and, tearing at the flesh and skin of his back in mouthfuls, they fed on them until sunset.
Then the heavenly palace reappeared. The apsarā nymphs also reappeared, and the well-formed man, handsome and pleasing to the eye, who was adorned with armlets, earrings, bracelets, perfumes, and all kinds of garlands, played with, took pleasure in, and amused the apsarā nymphs.
Śroṇa approached them and asked, “Good people, who are you and what deed caused you to be born here?”
“Śroṇa, the people of Jambudvīpa are skeptical, so you won’t believe us.”
“Good people, how can I not believe you when I can see you with my own eyes?”
“Śroṇa, when I was a butcher in the village of Vāsava I earned my living by slaughtering sheep and selling their meat. Out of compassion the noble Mahākātyāyana came to see me and said, ‘My friend, the ripening fruit of this behavior will be unpleasant, so give up this evil, unworthy way of life.’
“But I did not give it up as he had urged. To persuade me to give it up, again and again he said, ‘My friend, the ripening fruit of this behavior will be unpleasant, so give up this evil, unworthy way of life.’
“But I still did not give it up. Then he asked me, ‘My friend, do you slaughter the sheep during the day or at night?’
“ ‘During the day, noble one,’ I replied.
“He said, ‘Why not pledge to observe pure conduct at night?’
“After that I pledged to observe pure conduct at night. The ripening fruit of that act is that I experience pleasure in this way at night, while the ripening fruit of the act of slaughtering sheep by day is that I experience suffering in this way during the day.”
Then he uttered this verse:
“Śroṇa, are you going to the village of Vāsava? Tell my son, who works as a butcher there, ‘I saw your father, and he says the ripening fruit of this work will be unpleasant, so give up this evil, unworthy way of life.’
“Alas, my good man, as you have said to me, the people of Jambudvīpa are skeptical. He won’t believe me.”
“Śroṇa, if he doesn’t believe you, tell him, ‘Your father says that he buried a pot of gold dust beneath the butchering block. Retrieve it and live in happiness and contentment for a long time. From time to time offer alms to the noble Mahākātyāyana, and dedicate the merit in our name. Then the karma will dwindle, and be exhausted and spent.”
Śroṇa departed and, some time later, when the sun was rising, he saw another heavenly palace. In it there was a well-formed apsarā nymph, beautiful and pleasing to the eye, and a well-formed man, handsome and pleasing to the eye, who was adorned with armlets, earrings, bracelets, perfumes, and all kinds of garlands. He frolicked, took pleasure, and made love with her.
Seeing him while he was still far away, they each began to call out, “Welcome, Śroṇa! Are you not thirsty? Are you not hungry?”
Thinking, “Without a doubt they are gods, or nāgas, or yakṣas,” he said, “I am thirsty. I am hungry.”
They bathed him and gave him food, and he remained in the heavenly palace until sunset when they said to him, “Śroṇa, it will be miserable here, so leave.”
Śroṇa, who had seen other miseries, left, went a short distance in one direction, and waited. Then, at sunset, the heavenly palace vanished. The apsarā nymph vanished too. A great centipede appeared. It wrapped itself seven times around the man’s body, winding up on top, from where it made a meal of his brains until the sun rose. [B21]
Then the heavenly palace reappeared. The apsarā nymph also reappeared, as did the well-formed man, handsome and pleasing to the eye, who was adorned with armlets, earrings, bracelets, perfumes, and all kinds of garlands. He frolicked, took pleasure, and made love with her.
Śroṇa approached them and asked, “Good people, who are you and what deed caused you to be born here?”
“Śroṇa, the people of Jambudvīpa are skeptical, so you won’t believe us.”
The Chapter on Leather is the fifth chapter of The Chapters on Monastic Discipline, which has seventeen chapters in all. In the preceding three chapters of The Chapters on Monastic Discipline, the rules, rites, and procedures needed to establish and maintain a Buddhist monastic community are introduced. The present chapter opens with a narrative set in a border region beyond the Buddhist heartland. This story, which is also found in the Divyāvadāna, depicts Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa delivering an epistle from his teacher Mahākātyāyana in south India to the Buddha in north India. In his message, the venerable Mahākātyāyana conveys five difficulties faced by monastic communities in far-flung places where local conditions and customs differ from those in the central Buddhist lands of Magadha, Kośala, and the Vṛji Republic. In response, the Buddha relaxes the rules for monks living in such places to allow that (1) ordination in border regions may be done by a group of five monks that includes a vinaya holder; (2) monks may bathe regularly; (3) sandals with a single lining may be kept and worn; (4) leather ground-spreads and ground-spread covers may be used; and (5) no one is at fault if the robes sent by a monk to another monk are lost on the way. This chapter is also the first of five chapters in The Chapters on Monastic Discipline that contain the Buddha’s detailed rulings on acceptable forms of material support—necessities of clothing, food, medicine, and shelter—allowed for monks. In this, The Chapter on Leather, the Buddha also relaxes rules governing the use of beds, seats, carriages, sandals, etc., to allow the use of some conveniences for the ill, the elderly, and those otherwise unable to manage.
This text was translated by Cuilan Liu, Jamyang Rinchen, Andy Francis, and Sue Roach. The introduction was written by Bob Miller and Sue Roach. Thanks to Shayne Clarke for commenting on a draft of the introduction.
The translation was completed under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha. Bob Miller edited the translation and the introduction, and Ven. Konchog Norbu copyedited the text. Martina Cotter was in charge of the digital publication process.
The translation of this text has been made possible through the generous sponsorship of Xun Wang, Kebin Wang, Xiaojuan Dang, and Ziqing Xu.
In The Chapter on Cloth, the Buddha explains that wearing hides is prohibited because doing so is “a badge of the non-Buddhist.” Some non-Buddhist renunciants were known for wearing animal hides; it was, in a sense, their trademark. And therefore, so as not to be confused with them, Buddhist monks should not wear animal hides. This ruling in The Chapter on Cloth suggests that monks’ robes were a type of uniform that marked the wearer and symbolically communicated their sectarian identity as Buddhist monks.
A different concern is in evidence in The Chapter on Leather’s stories and rules, though: adapting monastic rules to ease life for monks living beyond the Buddhist heartland. As the Buddhist saṅgha grew in the centuries before the Common Era, monks took up residence in different parts of India. Customs and material goods, along with the flora and the fauna, differed from those in the countries or “city-states” of Magadha, Kośala, Kāśī, Vatsa, and the Vṛji Republic, where the Buddhist saṅgha first emerged and flourished. In such different circumstances, adhering to the monastic rules was not always practicable, prompting Buddhist monks living in these areas to seek special dispensations or allowances. The frame narrative of The Chapter on Leather is set in one of these diaspora communities in the frontier country of Aśmaka.
In Aśmaka, the venerable Mahākātyāyana reports, cattle trample the earth, leaving the ground rough and rocky, so the people sit on ground-spreads and ground-spread covers made from sheepskin, cowhide, deerskin, and goatskin, whereas in other places in India the people usually sit on seats made of wool, tree bark, cotton, or a cotton-wool mix. The venerable Mahākātyāyana is concerned because, when he and his students are invited into patrons’ homes and offered a seat, they are invariably offered a seat made of leather. And yet they are obliged to refuse, since the Buddha had not allowed it. Since the venerable Mahākātyāyana does not cite a specific prohibition, we are left to speculate as to the exact reasons for his misgivings. In the context of the frame story, when the Buddha allows monks in border regions to sit on leather seats, bathe daily, and wear sandals with one lining all in one fell swoop, he seems to adopt a pragmatic stance in allowing these conveniences, which do not grossly transgress Buddhist principles of nonharming and compassion.
The most significant new adaptation adopted at Mahākātyāyana’s behest was the relaxation of rules for ordaining monks in border regions, which is why this initial story is summarized under the heading “Ordination by Five” in the chapter’s first summary. For the present-day ordination rite prescribed by the Buddha, a quorum of ten monks is needed. Here, the Buddha allows that a quorum of five monks (in which the fifth is a vinaya holder) will suffice to ordain monks in border regions like Aśmaka. This consequential amendment to the community’s primary gatekeeping institution made it much easier to ordain new monks in the outlying kingdoms and city-states in which Buddhist monks increasingly found themselves in the centuries before and after the start of the Common Era.
Allowing ordination by five in border regions necessitated an official demarcation of center and periphery, so that monks would know where exactly a quorum of five would suffice for ordaining a new member. In The Chapter on Leather, the Buddha establishes the borders of the Buddhist heartland or “Center” as extending, in modern geopolitical terms, as far east as Bengal, as far south as the Deccan, as far west as Delhi and Thanesar, and as far north as Uttarakhand. Beyond lay the frontier regions, where Buddhist monks lived, initially at least, only in small numbers.
The remaining stories in The Chapter on Leather fall into two types: (1) those in which Upananda alone or all members of the group of six take an allowance to such ostentatious lengths that the Buddha is forced to restrict it, and (2) those that feature other, mostly nameless and blameless monks whose struggles to cope with the ascetic life prompt the Buddha to relax the rules and allow conveniences. In stories of the second type, hardships posed by the physical environment, rather than wayward monks, prompt new allowances from the Buddha, such as when monks stub their toes and scrape their heels climbing Vulture Peak Mountain and the Buddha allows toe and heel covers.
In a recent article, Schopen succinctly identifies the two kinds of protagonist one tends to see in the canonical vinayas: “Most of the monks that cause trouble in vinaya texts are either nameless or members of the Group-of-Six.” Regarding Upananda and his band, Schopen notes that “each member of the Group [of Six] appears to be a literary creation meant to embody or stand for one or another common monastic failing or fault.” Upananda, for instance, personifies greed, as evidenced by the size of his estate at death. He appears so frequently in the canonical vinayas, Schopen observes, that he “may be one of the most fully developed characters in all of Indian literature.” In one of his more famous pieces, “The Learned Monk as a Comic Figure,” Schopen discusses passages that satirize Upananda and the group of six as greedy gluttons. The humor with which their transgressive antics are depicted evinces, Schopen argues, a familiarity with Indian drama on the part of the compilers of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya.
Here, in The Chapter on Leather, Upananda and the group of six’s indulgent tendencies are sometimes juxtaposed against the restraint shown by monks committed to the “practices of the austere.” Monks who engage in these practices live with only the barest of supports. Though austere, these practices are nevertheless sanctioned by the Buddha and thus demarcate the outer boundary of accepted Buddhist ascetic practice.
Narratively, then, the members of the group of six and their ascetic, forest-dwelling counterparts function as tropes in these stories, employed by the compilers as personifications of indulgence on the one hand and strict but acceptable asceticism on the other. The Bodhisattva, in his pursuit of awakening, famously rejected the more extreme forms of asceticism practiced by his contemporaries. In the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, this turning point is retold in The Chapter on Schisms in the Saṅgha, the seventeenth and final chapter of this text. There, the Buddha-to-be sits in a charnel ground, poked and prodded by children from the village who cannot tell whether he is dead or alive. Reflecting on the hardships he has endured and the fruits they bore, he concludes that the mortifying disciplines he has learned are not conducive to awakening. He wonders what kind of practice might suffice when suddenly he remembers a childhood experience of ease, felt while seated underneath a rose-apple tree in his father’s fields:
“When I was living in the house of my father, the Śākyan Śuddhodana, I followed him to the fields he tilled and sat down in the shade of a rose-apple tree. There, free of desire, wrongdoing, and nonvirtue, I remember attaining the first dhyāna, which is endowed with thought, reflection, and the pleasure and ease born of solitude. That is the path. That is the practice. It enables knowledge, enables seeing, and enables unsurpassed, complete awakening, but it will not be easy for me, who has grown emaciated and weak, to cultivate that. I should inhale at ease and exhale at ease; I should take coarse porridge and gruel as food, massage my body with ghee and sesame oil, and bathe in soft water.”
Of course, Buddhist monks were not to take such accounts as license to do as they pleased. Again and again, in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya in general and this chapter in particular, those who freely indulge their whims and pleasures are censured by brahmins and prominent householders and accused of being “obsessed with sense pleasures.” Inevitably, these accusations prompt new rules, with which the monastic “middle way” between indulgence and self-mortification is further defined. Stories featuring Upananda and the rest of the group of six can be found under the headings “Wide Beds,” “Carriage,” “Swimming,” “Cow’s Tail,” “Inappropriate Motifs,” “Allow to Protect,” and “Lace Up Crosswise.”
The sequence of stories and rulings in The Chapter on Leather well demonstrates how the Vinaya is “reactive” in its rulemaking. Rules are modified in response to different circumstances, either relaxed on compassionately pragmatic grounds or restricted to rein in indulgence. For example:
• The Buddha prohibits high and wide seats, then allows monks to sit on them, but only in the home of a householder.
• The Buddha prohibits monks from traveling by carriage, then allows the ill and elderly to do so.
• Monks may not swim, but they may learn how.
• Monks may not touch women, but they may rescue a woman who is drowning in a river.
• Monks may not use leather items, but they may hold on to an animal’s tail when crossing a river, and they may keep an animal bladder as a floatation aid for crossing rivers.
• Monks may not wear wooden sandals, except inside a householder’s home at the householder’s request. If laypeople offer wooden sandals, they should be accepted.
• The Buddha allows monks to wear rope sandals after monks develop sores from sandals made of bamboo leaves and muñja grass.
• The Buddha prohibits sandals with multiple linings but then allows them when donated by a householder who has already used them.
The Chapter on Leather features stories with two monks named Śroṇa. The second of these, Śroṇa Koṭīviṃśa, is the main protagonist of a short but fascinating narrative included in the second summary. Śroṇa Koṭīviṃśa, known as Soṇa-Koḷiviśa Thera in the Pali Vinaya, was the son of a wealthy merchant from Campā. His privileged background is apparent on the soles of his feet, from which grow long golden hairs as a result of being carried everywhere. The group of six taunt him for being so coddled and express doubt about whether he will be able to exert the effort needed to progress in the Buddha’s teaching. Śroṇa Koṭīviṃśa, hearing their taunts, refuses to be discouraged and seeks out Ānanda, asking how a determined person might remain in absorption on the teaching. When Ānanda tells him it is through walking, Śroṇa Koṭīviṃśa practices walking meditation with such zeal that his feet bleed. The Buddha, having compassion for him, allows Śroṇa Koṭīviṃśa to put a lining in his sandals to protect his feet. But Śroṇa Koṭīviṃśa refuses the preferential treatment and agrees to wear sandals with one lining only if all monks are allowed to do so, a condition the Buddha then grants.
The second Śroṇa is Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa, whose avadāna provides the frame story for Mahākātyāyana and his five-point epistle to the Buddha, discussed above. Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s avadāna is the second of several avadānas extracted from The Chapters on Monastic Discipline for the Divyāvadāna collection. The Sanskrit word avadāna refers to one of nine or twelve genres used to classify the Buddha’s early teachings. In the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, avadānas narrate the “karmic history” of their subjects’ accomplishments, both on the Buddhist path and in the world. The subject of an avadāna is typically one of the Buddha’s close disciples or a notable lay follower. Furthermore, according to Andy Rotman, avadānas follow a tripartite structure that consists of: (1) a story in the present tense in which characters discover the benefits of Buddhist practice and meet the Buddha; (2) a story of the past detailing the deeds done by those characters in a previous lifetime that have now come to karmic fruition; and (3) a juncture at which time the Buddha—who is quite literally an “omniscient narrator”—identifies the characters in the story of the past with those in the story of the present.
The story of Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa here follows that threefold structure. The narrative begins in the “present” (i.e., the Buddha’s time) in the village of Vāsava in the frontier country of Aśmaka, in south India, where Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa grows up in luxury. Before he squanders his family fortune, his father sends him out as a caravan leader to the Isle of Jewels to collect the island’s titular bounty. But, on their return to India, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa is separated from his companions and stumbles upon a city of hungry ghosts. Unable to resist the urge to enter, he wanders the city for twelve years, encountering various hungry ghosts, from whom he learns of a great Buddhist monk named Mahākātyāyana.
On his return to the country of Aśmaka, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa seeks out the venerable Mahākātyāyana and requests permission to go forth, and be ordained as a monk. But the venerable Mahākātyāyana urges him to deliver the messages he received from the hungry ghosts first. Once he has done so, the venerable Mahākātyāyana allows Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa to go forth. But he must wait to be ordained as a monk until Mahākātyāyana can gather the necessary ten monks, which is difficult given the paucity of monks in that border region of south India. Mahākātyāyana’s students spend the three months of rains scattered about in different places, practicing yoga (i.e., meditation) and receiving instruction. After the rains, Mahākātyāyana’s many students come to see their teacher to resolve their outstanding questions. Through this process, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa attains arhatship and is ordained as a monk by Mahākātyāyana and a gathering of ten.
Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa then seeks permission to see and serve the Buddha in person, which Mahākātyāyana grants. It is then that the venerable Mahākātyāyana charges Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa with delivering his epistle to the Buddha, informing the Blessed One of five issues that monks face in the south of India. In response to these concerns, the Buddha allows that (1) ordination in border regions may be done by a group of five monks that includes a vinaya holder; (2) monks may bathe regularly; (3) sandals with a single lining may be kept and worn; (4) leather ground-spreads and ground-spread covers may be kept; and (5) no one is at fault if the robes sent by a monk to another monk are lost on the way.
The Buddha then narrates a story of the past about a merchant who took care of a stūpa dedicated to the Buddha Kāśyapa and made the aspiration to be reborn into a rich family and attain the Dharma. Finally, the “juncture,” or narrative denouement, is reached with the Buddha’s identification of the merchant with Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa.
Embedded in Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s story are a series of shorter avadānas or “karmic histories” revealing what each of the hungry ghosts did in his or her former life that led to their rebirth in one of the lower realms of existence. The repetition found in these stories serves to reinforce the underlying principle of karmic cause and effect, which the Buddha sums up at the end of Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s avadāna:
“The ripened fruits of wholly negative actions are wholly negative, while the ripened fruits of wholly positive actions are wholly positive, and the ripened fruits of of mixed actions are mixed. Monks, therefore abandon wholly negative and mixed actions, and seek wholly positive actions. Monks, this is how you should train.”
The Mūlasarvāstivādin Chapter on Leather has survived in at least three languages: Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan. The Sanskrit original was discovered in Gilgit (in present-day northern Kashmir) in the 1930s. The Sanskrit manuscript is fragmentary, with approximately 20 percent of the text missing. The manuscript itself dates to around the sixth to the seventh century, which is probably two to three centuries after the redaction of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya closed around the fourth or fifth century. These manuscripts are available in a textual edition published by Nalinaksha Dutt. Facsimiles of the manuscripts are included in Vinaya Texts, edited by Shayne Clarke, along with an excellent introduction, bibliography, and textual concordance.
The present translation of The Chapter on Leather is based on the Tibetan translation in the Degé Kangyur, with reference to the Stok Palace recension where Degé is unclear. The Tibetan translation of a Sanskrit Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya was made around the first decade of the ninth century. It is assumed to be complete, with some caveats.
We have also consulted the Chinese translation carried out by Yijing (635–713
A parallel to the Mūlasarvāstivādin Chapter on Leather is found in the Cammakkhandaka of the Pali Vinaya of the Theravādins. In the Pali language account, the order of the two Śroṇas is reversed. The Pali version opens with the story of Śroṇa (Soṇa Koḷivisa) and his bleeding feet, with a much-abbreviated account of Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s questions occurring toward the end of the chapter. For an overview of monastic footwear from India to China, see Ann Heirman’s article (2016) Shoes in Buddhist Monasteries from India to China: From Practical Attire to Symbol.
A summary of The Chapter on Leather:
The Blessed Buddha was staying in Prince Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍada’s Park. At that time, in a village called Vāsava in the frontier country of Aśmaka, there was a householder named Balasena who was rich, wealthy, and prosperous, with vast and extensive holdings, who possessed the wealth of Vaiśravaṇa, whose wealth rivaled that of Vaiśravaṇa. Having taken a wife of equal caste, he frolicked, took pleasure, and made love with her. But although he frolicked, took pleasure, and made love with her, they produced neither son nor daughter. With his hand pressed to his cheek, he lamented, “I have accumulated all this wealth for the household, and yet I have neither son nor daughter. And so, since I have no heir, all of my possessions will be appropriated by the king upon my death.” He sat there, brooding.
His loved ones, relatives, and friends asked, “Why are you brooding? Pray to the gods! Then you will have a son.”
Having considered it, he thought, “They’re right. Very well then, I’ll pray to the gods for a son.” So, childless and out of deep longing for a son, he prayed to gods such as Śiva, Varuṇa, Kubera, Śakra, and Brahmā, and then supplicated the god of the park, the god of the forest, the god of the crossroads, the god at the junction of three roads, the god who accepts oblations, as well as his hereditary god, who shared his Dharma and was always connected to him.
It is popularly said that sons and daughters are born as the result of such prayers. But this is not the case. If it were the case, then it would be so for everyone, and, for example, everyone would have a thousand sons like a universal monarch. Instead, when three conditions are present, sons and daughters are born. What three conditions? The father and mother, feeling passion, have intercourse; the mother is healthy and ovulating; and a gandharva is nearby. When these three conditions are present, sons and daughters are born.
As Balasena sat making such earnest entreaties, a being in its last existence who was seeking a host, who had grasped the essence of liberation, who had turned toward nirvāṇa, who had turned away from saṃsāra, who did not seek birth and death in any kind of conditioned existence, and who was taking its last body, died in the realm of the gods and entered the womb of Balasena’s wife.
Some women wise in nature possess five distinctive characteristics. What are the five? She knows when a man is in the grip of desire and she knows when his desire has abated; she knows when the time is right and knows her menstrual cycle; she knows when a being has entered her womb; she knows where the being in her womb has come from; and she knows if it is a boy and knows if it is a girl. If it will be a boy, it settles and rests on the right side of the belly. If it is a girl, it settles and rests on the left side of the belly.
Glad and delighted, she said to her husband, “Son of a noble one, take joy in our fortune! For I am pregnant, and since the child has settled and is resting on the right side of my belly, there is no doubt that it will be a boy.”
Glad and delighted too, he was inspired to speak these inspired words: “May I see the face of the son I have long wished for! May he be in harmony with me and not in conflict with me! May he carry out my duties! May he, having been supported by me, support me in return! May he enjoy his inheritance! May he secure the family line for a long time! When we are dead and the time is right, may he offer donations, whether few or many. When he has made merit, may he assign the reward in our names, saying, ‘Wherever those two have been reborn, may this go there and follow them!’ ”
Upon learning that a being had entered his wife’s womb, Balasena installed her in the upper story of their mansion and, to ensure that the being in her womb would reach full term, he provided her with what was needed for the cold when it was cold and what was needed for the heat when it was hot. On the doctor’s advice, her food was not to be too bitter, too sour, too salty, too sweet, too spicy, or too astringent; and so she was given food that was devoid of bitterness, sourness, sweetness, spiciness, and astringency. With her body adorned with necklaces and strings of pearls, she was moved from bed to bed, from seat to seat, without touching the floor, like an apsarā floating through a pleasure grove, with Balasena seeing that she did not even hear the slightest of unpleasant sounds.
After eight or nine months had passed, she gave birth to a boy who was well formed, pleasing to the eye, handsome, with a golden complexion, a parasol-shaped head, long arms, a large and broad brow, eyebrows that met in the middle, a high-bridged nose, and a jewel-encrusted earring in one ear.
The householder Balasena summoned each and every appraiser of jewels who lived in the village of Vāsava to examine the jewel and said to them, “Gentlemen, determine the value of this jewel.”
They said, “We cannot determine the value of this jewel.”
Customarily, when the value of a jewel cannot be determined, it is valued at ten million. So they said, “Householder, this jewel is worth ten million.”
His relatives gathered, and for three weeks—twenty-one days—they held a great celebratory feast for the newborn to name him.
“Gentlemen, what name should we give the boy?”
His friends replied, “Since he was born under the constellation of Śravaṇa, and with an earring embellished with a jewel worth ten million in one ear, the boy’s name should be Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa (Born Under Śravaṇa with an Ear Worth Ten Million).” So he was named Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa.
On the very day that Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa was born, two sons were born to servants of the householder Balasena. They named one Dāsaka (Servant) and named the other Pālaka (Protector).
Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa was entrusted to eight nurses—two nurses to cuddle him, two nurses to breastfeed him, two nurses to clean him, and two nurses to play with him as companions. Nourished and fortified by the best of the best milk, yogurt, fresh butter, clarified butter, cream, and other special provisions given to him by these eight nurses, he grew quickly like a lotus in a lake.
When he grew up, he was entrusted to tutors in letters and numbers; in how to calculate and how to reckon by hand; in yields, deposits, entrustments, and withdrawals; and in the appraisal of land, the appraisal of cloth, the appraisal of jewels, the appraisal of elephants, the appraisal of horses, the appraisal of women, the appraisal of men, and the appraisal of wood. He perfected and discerned those eight appraisals and became expert in reading.
His father built for him three residences—one each for winter, spring, and summer. And, after also having three pleasure gardens constructed—one each for winter, spring, and summer—Balasena arranged three wives for Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa: an elder, middle, and junior. There, on the upper stories of his mansions, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa frolicked, took pleasure, and made love with his wives, to the accompaniment of music played by female musicians.
Meanwhile, the householder Balasena was always working hard at his farming. Seeing his father always working hard at his farming, Śroṇa asked him, “Father, why are you always working hard at your farming?”
“Son,” he replied, “if I frolicked, took pleasure, and made love on the upper story of the mansion, to the accompaniment of music played by female musicians, as you do, before long our wealth would dwindle, and then be exhausted and spent.”
“If that is the case, Father, I shall take some goods and go abroad,” he replied.
“Son, I have such jewels that even if you were to use them as you do sesame seeds, rice, jujube berries, or peas, the jewels I possess would not be exhausted.”
“Father, I shall take some goods and go abroad,” he said again and again.
Realizing that his son was determined, the householder Balasena granted his permission.
Balasena announced to the village of Vāsava, “Merchant gentlemen residing in the village of Vāsava, listen! Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa will take to the great sea, so whoever among you gentlemen would like to take to the great sea together with Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa—with a pilot, free of tariff, with no need for fare, with no need for tolls—pack your merchandise for a voyage on the great sea.” Five hundred merchants then readied their merchandise for the voyage on the great sea.
The householder Balasena invited the five hundred merchants to a feast in his own home and, having offered them a meal, said, “Listen, merchant gentlemen! As Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa is my son, he is yours, too. So may you dispel dangers and furnish assistance to him.”
“Master, we will do as you say,” the merchants said, heeding the householder Balasena.
The householder Balasena then said to Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa, “Son, just as you would listen to and carry out what I say, you should listen to and carry out what these five hundred merchants say.”
The householder Balasena reflected, “On what sort of mount should I send Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa?” He thought, “If one rides on an elephant while traveling, an elephant can be hard to maintain and hard to support. A horse is also hard to maintain and hard to support. Since a donkey is easy to feed and has a good memory, I will send him on a donkey.”
He then said to him, “Son, do not travel at the front or at the rear of the party. If a bandit is strong, he will attack the front of the caravan. If he is weak, he will attack the rear of the caravan. So you should travel in the middle of the merchants, for it is said that if the caravan leader is lost, the caravan will be lost.”
To Dāsaka and Pālaka he said, “On no account whatsoever should the two of you leave Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa behind!”
Later on, after performing the rituals for an auspicious, fortunate, and successful journey, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa went to his mother and said, “Mother, I’ve come to pay my respects, for I am setting off for the great sea.”
She began to cry, and he asked, “Why are you weeping, Mother?”
His mother continued crying as she said, “Son, I wonder whether I will ever see you again alive!”
He reflected, “I have performed the ritual for good fortune, but now she speaks so inauspiciously just as I’m leaving.” Irritated, he said, “Can you not see the miserable realms?”
“Son,” she said, “you speak harshly. Confess your transgression as a transgression, then its karma will dwindle, and be exhausted and spent.”
Confessing his transgression as a transgression, he asked her forgiveness.
Then, having performed the rituals for an auspicious, fortunate, and successful journey, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa packed many goods into carts, loads, sacks, and baskets, and onto camels, oxen, and donkeys, and set out for the great sea. Gradually passing through towns, cities, suburbs, and marketplaces, they arrived at the shore of the great sea, where they procured a large and splendid seafaring ship, in which they took to the great sea to procure wealth. Driven by a favorable wind, they reached the Isle of Jewels. After searching here and there, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa filled the great ship with jewels as if they were sesame seeds, grains, jujube berries, and kulattha peas. Driven by a favorable wind, the great ship returned to Jambudvīpa without mishap, and the merchants set up camp on the shore of the sea.
Śṛoṇa Koṭīkarṇa took Dāsaka and Pālaka off to one side away from the caravan and began to calculate income and expenses. Sometime later, he said to Dāsaka, “Dāsaka, see what the merchants are doing.” After he went there and saw that the merchants were sleeping, he lay down to sleep there too.
When Dāsaka had been gone for a long time, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa said to Pālaka, “Pālaka, see what the merchants are doing.” After he went there and saw that the merchants were loading the pack animals, he began loading the pack animals too.
Dāsaka thought, “I’m sure Pālaka will send for the caravan leader.”
Pālaka thought, “I’m sure Dāsaka will send for the caravan leader.”
After loading the pack animals, the merchants set off.
Meanwhile, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa, having grown drowsy, fell asleep.
After setting out and traveling until daybreak, the merchants asked, “Gentlemen, where is the caravan leader?”
“The caravan leader has gone to the front.”
They went to the front and asked, “Where is the caravan leader?”
“He went to the rear.”
They went to the rear and asked, “Where is the caravan leader?”
“He went to the middle.”
They went to the middle and again asked, but he did not appear to be anywhere.
Dāsaka said, “My thought was that Pālaka would surely send for the caravan leader.”
Pālaka said, “My thought was that Dāsaka would surely send for the caravan leader. Gentlemen, in any event, we have left the caravan leader behind and that is not good, so come, let us go back!”
“Gentlemen,” they said, “if we turn back, we will suffer all manner of misfortune, so come, let us just make a pact that, until our goods are stored away, on no account is anyone to inform Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s parents.” Having made such a pact, they carried on.
Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa’s parents, hearing that Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa was coming, went to welcome him.
“Where is the caravan leader?”
“He has gone to the front.”
They went to the front and asked, “Where is the caravan leader?”
“He went to the rear.”
They went to the rear and asked, “Where is the caravan leader?”
“He went to the middle.”
They confused the couple until the goods were stored away and then said, “Father, mother, we forgot the caravan leader.”
Later, someone came to the parents and said, “Father, mother, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa has come!” The parents gave him a reward and went to welcome Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa, but did not see him. Yet another person came and said, “Father, mother, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa has come!” They gave him a reward and went to welcome their son but saw no sign of him. Thus they came to trust no one.
In gardens, temples, and pavilions they placed parasols, bells, and fans on which they wrote, “If Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa still lives, may he quickly return, may he swiftly return! If he has passed away and gone to another life, may he be reborn into an exceptional life.” The couple went blind from grief and sobbing.
Meanwhile, when Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa woke up at sunrise, touched by the sun’s rays, he saw just two donkeys and not a single merchant there. He yoked and drove the two donkeys onward. As they went along, a wind blew up and covered the path with sand. Since the donkeys could remember the way, sniffing at the path, they proceeded slowly along. But when he hit and drove them with his spiked rod, he disturbed their memory and they strayed from the path into a forest of śāla trees.
When he saw the two donkeys overcome by thirst, tongues hanging out, both confused, Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa felt compassion. He thought, “If I don’t set them free, they shall suffer all manner of misfortune with me.”
So he freed them both and walked on until he saw a high and broad city of iron, at the gate of which stood a man, dark black, intimidating, fierce, red eyed, with a massive body, holding an iron club in his hand. Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa approached him and said, “Hey, my good man! Is there any water here?”
He just stood there silently, without saying a word.
Śroṇa asked again, “Hey, my good man! Is there any water here?”
But the man still stood there silently, without saying a word.
Śroṇa entered the city, calling out, “Water! Water!” whereupon he was surrounded by many hundreds of thousands of hungry ghosts with bodies resembling scorched posts, bone contraptions draped with head and body hair, with stomachs resembling mountains, and mouths like the eye of a needle.
“O Śroṇa, you are compassionate!” they said. “We are thirsty. Pour us some water.”
“Gentlemen,” he replied, “I too am looking for water. Where is there water that I can give you?”
“Śroṇa, where would there be water in this city of hungry ghosts?” they said. “In the past twelve years, only today have we heard the words ‘water, water.’ ”
“Gentlemen, who are you and what deed caused you to be born here?”
“Śroṇa, the people of Jambudvīpa are skeptical, so you won’t believe us.”
“Gentlemen, how could I not believe you when I can see you with my own eyes?”
Then they uttered this verse:
“Śroṇa, you possess very powerful merit, so go! Have you seen anyone at all who has entered a city of hungry ghosts and left it alive?”
He departed, and when he saw the man he said to him, “Alas, my friend! Had you informed me that this is a city of hungry ghosts, I would not have entered it.”
The man replied, “Śroṇa, you possess very powerful merit, so go! Have you seen anyone at all who has entered a city of hungry ghosts and left it alive?”
Some time after he departed, Śroṇa saw another high and broad city of iron, at the gate of which stood a man, dark black, intimidating, fierce, red eyed, with a massive body, holding an iron club in his hand . He approached the man and said “Hey, my good man! Is there any water here?”
He just stood there, without saying a word.
“Hey, my good man! Is there any water here?” he asked again.
But the man still stood there, without saying a word.
Śroṇa entered the city, calling out, “Water! Water!” whereupon he was surrounded by many hundreds of thousands of hungry ghosts with bodies resembling scorched posts, bone contraptions draped with head and body hair, with stomachs resembling mountains, and mouths like the eye of a needle.
“O Śroṇa, you are compassionate!” they said. “We are thirsty. Pour us some water.”
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I too am looking for water. Where is there water that I can give you?”
“Śroṇa, where would there be water in this city of hungry ghosts?” they said. “In the past twelve years, only today have we heard the words ‘water, water’ from you.”
“Gentlemen, who are you and what deed caused you to be born here?”
They replied, “Śroṇa, the people of Jambudvīpa are skeptical, so you won’t believe us.”
“Gentlemen, how can I not believe you when I can see you with my own eyes?”
Then they uttered this verse:
“Śroṇa, you possess very powerful merit, so go! Have you seen anyone at all who has entered a city of hungry ghosts and left it alive?”
He departed, and when he saw the man he said to him, “Alas, my friend! If you had informed me that this is a city of hungry ghosts, I would not have entered it.”
The man replied, “Śroṇa, you possess very powerful merit, so go! Have you seen anyone at all who has entered a city of hungry ghosts and left it alive?”
He departed and some time later, when the sun was setting, he saw a heavenly palace. In it there were four well-formed apsarā nymphs, beautiful and pleasing to the eye, and a well-formed man, handsome and pleasing to the eye, who was adorned with armlets, earrings, bracelets, perfumes, and all kinds of garlands. Alone, he played with, took pleasure in, and amused the apsarā nymphs.
Seeing him while he was still far away, they each began to call out, “Welcome, Śroṇa! Are you not thirsty? Are you not hungry?”
Thinking, “Without a doubt they are gods, or nāgas, or yakṣas,” he replied, “I am thirsty. I am hungry.”
They bathed him and gave him food, and he remained in the heavenly palace until the sun was about to rise. They said to him, “Śroṇa, it will be miserable here, so leave.”
Śroṇa left, went a short distance in one direction, and waited. Then, later, when the sun rose, the heavenly palace vanished. The apsarā nymphs vanished too. A pack of four piebald dogs appeared. They knocked the man over and, tearing at the flesh and skin of his back in mouthfuls, they fed on them until sunset.
Then the heavenly palace reappeared. The apsarā nymphs also reappeared, and the well-formed man, handsome and pleasing to the eye, who was adorned with armlets, earrings, bracelets, perfumes, and all kinds of garlands, played with, took pleasure in, and amused the apsarā nymphs.
Śroṇa approached them and asked, “Good people, who are you and what deed caused you to be born here?”
“Śroṇa, the people of Jambudvīpa are skeptical, so you won’t believe us.”
“Good people, how can I not believe you when I can see you with my own eyes?”
“Śroṇa, when I was a butcher in the village of Vāsava I earned my living by slaughtering sheep and selling their meat. Out of compassion the noble Mahākātyāyana came to see me and said, ‘My friend, the ripening fruit of this behavior will be unpleasant, so give up this evil, unworthy way of life.’
“But I did not give it up as he had urged. To persuade me to give it up, again and again he said, ‘My friend, the ripening fruit of this behavior will be unpleasant, so give up this evil, unworthy way of life.’
“But I still did not give it up. Then he asked me, ‘My friend, do you slaughter the sheep during the day or at night?’
“ ‘During the day, noble one,’ I replied.
“He said, ‘Why not pledge to observe pure conduct at night?’
“After that I pledged to observe pure conduct at night. The ripening fruit of that act is that I experience pleasure in this way at night, while the ripening fruit of the act of slaughtering sheep by day is that I experience suffering in this way during the day.”
Then he uttered this verse:
“Śroṇa, are you going to the village of Vāsava? Tell my son, who works as a butcher there, ‘I saw your father, and he says the ripening fruit of this work will be unpleasant, so give up this evil, unworthy way of life.’
“Alas, my good man, as you have said to me, the people of Jambudvīpa are skeptical. He won’t believe me.”
“Śroṇa, if he doesn’t believe you, tell him, ‘Your father says that he buried a pot of gold dust beneath the butchering block. Retrieve it and live in happiness and contentment for a long time. From time to time offer alms to the noble Mahākātyāyana, and dedicate the merit in our name. Then the karma will dwindle, and be exhausted and spent.”
Śroṇa departed and, some time later, when the sun was rising, he saw another heavenly palace. In it there was a well-formed apsarā nymph, beautiful and pleasing to the eye, and a well-formed man, handsome and pleasing to the eye, who was adorned with armlets, earrings, bracelets, perfumes, and all kinds of garlands. He frolicked, took pleasure, and made love with her.
Seeing him while he was still far away, they each began to call out, “Welcome, Śroṇa! Are you not thirsty? Are you not hungry?”
Thinking, “Without a doubt they are gods, or nāgas, or yakṣas,” he said, “I am thirsty. I am hungry.”
They bathed him and gave him food, and he remained in the heavenly palace until sunset when they said to him, “Śroṇa, it will be miserable here, so leave.”
Śroṇa, who had seen other miseries, left, went a short distance in one direction, and waited. Then, at sunset, the heavenly palace vanished. The apsarā nymph vanished too. A great centipede appeared. It wrapped itself seven times around the man’s body, winding up on top, from where it made a meal of his brains until the sun rose. [B21]
Then the heavenly palace reappeared. The apsarā nymph also reappeared, as did the well-formed man, handsome and pleasing to the eye, who was adorned with armlets, earrings, bracelets, perfumes, and all kinds of garlands. He frolicked, took pleasure, and made love with her.
Śroṇa approached them and asked, “Good people, who are you and what deed caused you to be born here?”
“Śroṇa, the people of Jambudvīpa are skeptical, so you won’t believe us.”