e, 50 to
60 feet wide by 33 deep. One day, while teaching the mendicants
outside, our Lord compared man to a Saptaparna (seven-leaved) plant,
showing them how after the loss of its first leaf every other could be
easily detached, but the seventh leaf--directly connected with the stem.
"Mendicants," he said, "there are seven Buddhas in every Buddha, and
there are six Bikshus and but one Buddha in each mendicant. What are
the seven? The seven branches of complete knowledge. What are the six?
The six organs of sense. What are the five? The five elements of
illusive being. And the ONE which is also ten? He is a true Buddha who
develops in him the ten forms of holiness and subjects them all to the
one--'the silent voice' (meaning Avolokiteswara). After that, causing
the rock to be moved at His command, the Tathagata made it divide itself
into a seventh additional chamber, remarking that a rock too was
septenary, and had seven stages of development. From that time it was
called the Sattapanni or the Saptaparna cave. After the first Synod was
held, seven gold statues of the Bhagavat were cast by order of the king,
and each of them was placed in one of the seven compartments." These in
after times, when the good law had to make room to more congenial
because more sensual creeds, were taken in charge by various Viharas and
then disposed of as explained. Thus when Mr. Turnour states on the
authority of the sacred traditions of Southern Buddhists that the cave
received its name from the Sattapanni plant, he states what is correct.
In the "Archeological Survey of India," we find that Gen. Cunningham
identifies this cave with one not far away from it and in the same
Baihbar range, but which is most decidedly not our Saptaparna cave. At
the same time the Chief Engineer of Buddha Gaya, Mr. Beglar, describing
the Chetu cave, mentioned by Fa-hian, thinks it is the Saptaparna cave,
and he is right. For that, as well as the Pippal and the other caves
mentioned in our texts, are too sacred in their associations--both
having been used for centuries by generations of Bhikkhus, unto the very
time of their leaving India--to have their sites so easily forgotten.
---------

On the other hand, the Southern Buddhists, headed by the Ceylonese, open
their annals with the following event:--

They claim according to their native chronology that Vijaya, the son of
Sinhabahu, the sovereign of Lala, a small kingdom or Raj on the Gandaki