འཕགས་པ་ག་ཡ་མགའ་ར་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.6

intro.6

Gayāśīrṣa Hill is set in a place and time commemorated in Buddhist accounts of the life of the Buddha. In the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, The Chapter on a Schism in the Saṅgha (Saṅgha­bhedavastu) describes in detail the Buddha’s visit to Gayāśīrṣa Hill when, not long after his first teaching in Sarnath, he had returned to the Urubilvā (or Uruvilvā) area and had converted the three Kāśyapa brothers of Urubilvā (Pali Uruvelā) and their thousand jaṭila (matted-haired) ascetic followers who had been practicing on the banks of the nearby Nairañjanā River. It was on Gayāśīrṣa Hill that he led them all to attain the level of arhat by displaying the “three miracles,” i.e., the miracle of the supernatural, the miracle of pointing out, and the miracle of instruction, and he remained there until he was invited to Rājagṛha for the first time by King Bimbisāra. These events are summarized in a passage that appears in parallel in several other texts, notably The Chapter on Going Forth (Pravrajyāvastu, Toh 1, ) and The Hundred Deeds (Karmaśataka, Toh 340, –), with a parallel in the Pali literature, too: the Mahāvagga section of the Vinaya Piṭaka describes the Buddha staying on Gayāśīrṣa Hill “accompanied by a great saṅgha of bhikkhus consisting of one thousand fully ordained monks, all of whom were previously ascetics with matted hair.”⁶ It was on that occasion, according to the Pali tradition, that he delivered the famous Ādittapariyāya, often known as the “Fire Sermon,” found in the Saṃyutta Nikāya (SN 35.28), a teaching that matches what the Saṅgha­bhedavastu says of the “miracle of instruction.”