The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c9.63

c9.63

If now after the Sanskrit version we consult the Pâli tradition, we find that the *mahâ-prâtihârya* of Çrâvastî is there usually designated « the miracle at the foot of the mango-tree ». The *Mahâvamsa* and the commentary of the *Jâtaka*, for example, give it no other name. According to the latter, as also according to the Singhalese and the Burmese (¹) accounts, Buddha did, in fact, begin by accomplishing the magical operation which the jugglers of India are always endeavouring to imitate : from the stone of a mango planted in the ground he is supposed to have forthwith grown an enormous tree, covered at once with flowers and fruits. But then this is merely a simple extra, scarcely even a curtain-raiser. When the great day has come, the divinities assemble, and the introduction to *Jâtaka* no. 483 tells us in a single sentence that « The Master, having accomplished the *yamaka-pātihāriya*, and having recognized the believing dispositions of a great number of people, redescended, and, seated on his Buddha seat, taught the law » (¹). If we analyse this brief résumé of the scene, it is not difficult to recognize in it, exactly as in the overelaborate version of the *Divyāvadāna*, the distinct and successive enunciation of the same two moments, that of the « pair of miracles » and that of the preaching.