How transient are all component things!
Growth is their nature and decay:
They are produced, they are dissolved again:
And then is best,--when they have sunk to rest .

[393] Thus did the great Sudassana lead his discourse up to ambrosial Nirvana as its goal. Moreover, to the rest of the multitude he gave the exhortation to be charitable, to obey the Commandments, and to keep hallowed the fast days. The destiny be won was to be re-born thereafter in the Realm of Devas.

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His lesson ended, the Master identified the Birth by saying, "The mother of Rahula was the Queen Subhadda of those days; Rahula was the King's eldest son; the disciples of the Buddha were his courtiers; and I myself the great Sudassana."

[Note. For the evolution of this Jataka, see the Maha-parinibbana Sutta and the Maha-Sudassana Sutta, translated by Prof. Rhys Davids in his volume of "Buddhist Suttas."]

Footnotes

^230:1 For the death of Sariputta, see Bigandet's 'Legend of the Burmese Buddha.'

^231:1 For the death of Moggallana, see Fausboll's Dhammapada, p. 298, and Bigandet, op. cit.

^231:2 The 17th Sutta of the Digha Nikaya, translated by Rhys Davids in Vol. XI. of the S. B. E.

^231:3 See pp. 267 and 277 of Vol. XI. of the S. B. E. for this palm-grove.

^231:4 This translation is borrowed from the Hibbert Lectures of Prof. Rhys Davids (2nd edition, p. 212), where a translation is given of the commentary on these "perhaps the most frequently quoted and most popular verses in Pali Buddhist books."

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