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The Twenty-Five-Hundredth Anniversary of the Buddha

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

George Cœdès
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Extract

The full moon in May is the occasion of the greatest festival of the year in the Buddhist world, it being the triple anniversary of the birth of Sakyamuni, of his ascent to the omniscience of a Buddha, and of his final extinction in Parinirvana. Ceylon and the countries of southeast Asia, which adopted the Singhalese Buddhism in the thirteenth century—Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos—are monsoon lands where the month of May coincides with the beginnings of the rains, thus signaling great rejoicing exemplified by offerings to the monks, recitals of prayers, and nocturnal circumambulations of the temples by the faithful torchbearers.

Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
Diogenes , Volume 4 , Issue 15 , September 1956 , pp. 95 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © 1956 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1. Vinaya, H. Oldenberg, ed., II, p. 256; Eng. trans., Warren, Buddhism in Translations, pp. 441 ff.

2. A. Bareau, Les premiers Counciles bouddhiques, Paris, 1955, pp. 7-15.

3. Anguttaranikaya, I, pp. 17-18; Samyuttanikaya, II, p. 224.

4. Milindapanha, V. Trenckner, ed., pp. 130-134.

5. Sammohavinodani, pp. 43 1-43 3; Saratthapakasini, Bangkok ed., II, p. 254.

6. Manorathapurani, I, pp. 87-91.

7. This disappearance is given in another commentary of the same epoch as achieving the Parinirvana of Sakyamuni—his complete annihilation—under the Tree of Knowledge, be ginning with the destruction of his passions and continuing to his death, through the destruc tion of the various constituents of his body, but which will not be complete until the last corporeal relics are destroyed by fire.

8. Journal of the Pali Text Society, ed. Minayeff, 1886, pp. 84-86.

9. Maung Tin and Rhys Davids, The Expositor, I, 35.

10. Edition singhalaise, XXII, 30.

11. Eastern Monarchism, London, 1850, pp. 427-430; A Manual of Buddhism, London, 1860.

12. See below, note 18.

13. Mula sasana, Bangkok edition, 1939, p. 263 ff.

14. This perhaps constitutes an argument tending to prove that the work had been com posed prior to that period, i.e., before the beginning of the Christian Era rather than after.

15. Lotus de la Bonne Loi, I, pp. 366-367.

16. A. Waley, review ofYabuki Keiki's work on that sect in Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, V, 1928, pp. 162-69.

17. Mahavamsa, XXXIII, 100-101; Dipavamsa, XX, 20-21.

18. Saddhammasangaha, Journal ofthe Pali Text Society, 1890, p. 49; Sangitivamsa, Bangkok, 1789; Siamese ed., 1923, p. 96.

19. G. Cœdès, Recueil des Inscriptions du Siam, I, pp. 83-87.

20. Traibhumikatha, Bangkok, 1913.

21. If someone asks, he says, "how much time will elapse before the doctrine of our Master will disappear, this is what one must reply: it will be 3099 years after the year when this great relic was installed."

As its foundation dates from 1357 A.D. it would be in 4456 A.D., that is, in the 5,000th year of the Buddhist Era, that this disappearance of Buddhism should take place, in accordance with the tradition established in the fifth century, by the Commentaries of Buddhaghosa.

"On the other hand," the inscription continues, "in ninety-nine years after the foundation of this great relic, in the year of the hog (1456 A.D. or 2000 in the Buddhist Era), the three collections of the Scriptures will disappear." The details of that disappearance follow:

"After another one thousand years (2456 A.D. or the 3,000th year of the Buddhist Era) there will still be some monks who will observe the four great precepts, but they will not increase in number.

"After another one thousand years (3456 A.D. or the 4,000th year of the Buddhist Era) there will no longer be any monks wearing the monastic robe, but there will still be a tiny piece of yellow cloth, just enough to fill the cavity of the ear, and it is by that sign that one will be able to recognize unmistakably the adepts in the doctrine of the Master.

"One thousand years later (4456 A.D. or the 5,000th year of the Buddhist Era) no one will any longer be able to recognize the monastic robe or to know what a monk is. The relics of the Master, whether it be the one installed here, or those installed elsewhere, will still be in existence. In the last year, when the doctrine of the Buddha, our Master, definitely disappears, in the Year of the Rat, during the full moon of the sixth month, on a Saturday, in the lunar house of Vaisakha, all the saintly relics, including not only the relics on the earth, but also the relics in the world of the gods, or in the world of the Nagas, will rise in the middle of the firmament, reassemble in the Island of Ceylon, and enter the great stupa Ratanamalika. Then they will be wafted up and enter the sacred Tree of Enlightenment underneath which the Master attained the omniscience of a Buddha. Thereupon, fire will devour all the saintly relics and the flame will rise up to the world of Brahma. On that day the doctrine of the Buddha will disappear. From that time no man will know of works which generate merit. Man will commit bad actions and will assuredly be reborn in hell."

22. L. Renou and J. Filliozat, L'Inde classique, II, p. 528.

23. These notions of the limited duration of Creation are very widespread. Not to men tion the Judeo-Christian apocalypse there is the Etruscan cosmology as it is briefly stated in a passage of Suidas: "The Demiurge has determined for the world a time span of twelve millennia; each of these I,000 years being placed under the domination of one of the signs of the Zodiac. The Creation itself would take six millennia. During the first millennium the Demiurge will make the Sky and the Earth and, during the second, the Firmament; in the third, the sea and the rivers, then the two great stars, then the souls of animals, and last, man, who would have only six millennia remaining to him" (A. Grenier, "Les Religions étrusque et romaine," in Mana, II, p. 25). We know that in the old Germanic faiths explained in the Scandinavian Edda, men, gods, giants, and demons are destined to perish in a great catastrophe. "The stars and the sun disappear; the earth falls into the sea, and great tongues of flame leap toward the sky. It is the end of a world, but not of all possible worlds. The universe over which Odin ruled foundered, finally, in moral abasement and in indignity. That is perhaps why it had to disappear. But now a new era begins. The beings who peopled the universe have not all disappeared. The earth is renewed, full of the freshness and vigor of youth, from the bosom of the sea…. An epoch of innocence and moral purity succeeds one of trickery, violence, and iniquity" (E. Tonnelat, La Religion des Germains, in Mana, II, pp. 380-81). One might cite many other examples, but none attains the intoxicating grandeur of the Indian vision of a universe eternally submitted to destruction and re-creation.

24. L. Renou and J. Filliozat, op. cit., p. 538.

25. "Tablettes votives bouddhiques du Siam," Etudes asiatiques de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient, 1925, I, pp. 150-51.

26. Supra, note 17.

27. Description of the Burmese Empire, p. 80.

28. Kenneth E. Wells, Thai Buddhism, Bangkok, 1939, pp. 50-51.