法苑珠林 8.92

8.92

As the Sūtra of the Twelve Wanderings (Shi'er you jing) says: In an asaṃkhyeya [kalpa] past, a bodhisattva was a king. Having lost his parents early, he yielded the realm to his younger brother, abdicated his throne, and sought the Path. Seeing from afar a brāhmaṇa whose clan name was Gautama, he followed him to study the Path. The brāhmaṇa said, 'You must cast off your royal garments, dress as I dress, and receive the clan name of Gautama.' Thereupon the bodhisattva received the Gautama clan name, entered deep mountains, ate fruits, drank water, and sat in meditation contemplating the Path. The bodhisattva went begging for food and eventually returned to his own realm. None of the officials or common people of the entire realm could recognise him, and they referred to him as the 'Junior Gautama'. The bodhisattva made a hermitage in a sugarcane garden outside the city (the Buddhacarita-sūtra says: 'An offshoot of the Sugarcane [dynasty], the Śākyas' king Śuddhodana was fully endowed with talent and virtue; hence he was called King Śuddhodana.' Examining this: King Śuddhodana's distant ancestor was a rebirth of Gautama; because in a previous life he lived in a sugarcane garden, the sūtra refers to him as 'an offshoot of the Sugarcane [dynasty]') and sat alone within it. At that time five hundred great thieves plundered palace goods and passed by the side of the bodhisattva's hut. The next day, those pursuing the thieves traced their footprints to the bodhisattva's dwelling, and they seized the bodhisattva. According to the law for robbers past and present, a wooden stake was driven through his body, setting him up as a sharp target, and blood flowed onto the ground. The senior Gautama saw this with his divine eye, flew over by psychic power, and asked, 'My son, what crime have you committed to suffer such cruelty? You have no descendants—how will your lineage be continued?' The bodhisattva answered, 'My life will end in a moment; why speak of descendants?' The king sent his attendants to shoot and kill him with crossbows. Gautama, grieving and weeping, took him down and placed him in a coffin. He took the remaining blood from the earth, rolled it into mud pellets, placed them into two vessels, and returned to his hermitage. The left blood he placed in the left vessel, and likewise for the right. The senior Gautama said, 'If this man of the Path was sincere in his resolve, the heavenly gods should cause the blood to transform into human beings.' After ten months, the left one became a boy, and the right one became a girl. Thereupon their clan name was Gautama, also called Śākya (Śākya is an honorable clan name of the Western regions). That the blood transformed into human beings was indeed an affair of past lifetimes; for fear of verbosity, the underlying causes cannot be recounted in full. Furthermore, the Pusa benxing jing says: Preceding the Ikṣvāku King (Sugarcane King) there was a king named Great Kuśa Grass (Mahātṛṇa). He entrusted the royal throne to his ministers, and surrounded by the great assembly, he was escorted out of the city. He shaved off his hair and beard and donned monastic robes. After the king had left household life, he maintained the precepts purely, was focused and vigorous, attained the four dhyānas, and fully achieved the five superknowledges, becoming a royal sage (rājarṣi). His lifespan was extremely long, until in his decrepit old age his flesh withered and his back bent. Though he leaned on a staff, he could not walk far. At that time, that royal sage had disciples. When the disciples wished to go east and west in search of food and drink, they gathered fine, soft grass and placed it in a basket, which they used to hold the royal sage, hanging it from a tree branch. Why? Because they feared that creeping insects and wild beasts might disturb the royal sage. After the disciples departed to beg for food, a hunter wandered through the mountains and wilderness. Seeing the royal sage from afar, he thought he was a white bird and promptly shot him. When the royal sage was shot, two drops of blood flowed and fell to the ground, whereupon he died. The disciples returned from begging for food, saw that the royal sage had been shot and killed, and also saw the two drops of blood on the ground. They immediately lowered the basket, placed the king on the ground, gathered firewood, and cremated the king's body. They collected the bones to make a stūpa, and offered various wonderful fragrant flowers to the stūpa, honouring, praising, and serving it to completion. At that time, from the two drops of blood on that ground, two sugarcane sprouts immediately grew, gradually growing tall and large. When the sugarcane was ripe, baked by the sun, it split open. One stalk of sugarcane produced a boy, and the other stalk of sugarcane produced a girl, upright and pleasing, without peer in the world. Then the disciples thought: 'When the royal sage was alive, he fathered no children. Now these two children are the royal sage's seed.' They nurtured and cared for them, and informed the ministers. The ministers summoned great brāhmaṇas skilled in physiognomy, instructed them to divine their marks, and sent them to bestow names. The physiognomists said: 'Because this boy was born when the sugarcane, ripened by the baking of the sun, split open, one name is Shansheng (Sujāta). Furthermore, because he came forth from sugarcane, his second name is Ikṣvāku (Sugarcane-born). Furthermore, because he came forth from sugarcane baked by the sun, he is also called the Solar Clan (Sūryavaṃśa).' The girl's causes and conditions were identical without difference; hence she was named Shanxian (Bhadra), and also named Shuibo (Water Ripple). The ministers took the boy born of the sugarcane seed, and while he was still young, they consecrated his head and installed him as king. When the virtuous girl reached maturity and was able to serve, she was installed as the king's foremost consort.