Toh 813 intro.12

intro.12

In this case, one near parallel is in the account of the episode that is spread over several chapters of the Mahāvastu, ⁵ a text that has survived in Sanskrit and is related to the Vinaya of the Mahāsāṃghika-Lokottaravādin school. According to that account, the Buddha’s arrival near the city is enough by itself to expel the harmful spirits that have caused the epidemic, and culminates in his reciting, still outside the city, a set of seventeen verses of auspiciousness (svastigāthā), thirteen of which extol the Three Jewels as the source of blessings and well-being. Of these, although the wording of the two texts in Sanskrit is significantly different, ten stanzas recognizably match the ten initial stanzas of the present work. The Mahāvastu version includes a longer initial homage, a verse immediately afterwards invoking the spirits, and an extra stanza on the jewel of the Saṅgha (eleventh of the long stanzas). The two texts differ most noticeably in their concluding verses.