The two canonical Pali Commentaries discuss but do not 

 agree on the meaning to give to sTikara-maddava. One of them is 

 the canonical Pali Commentary on the DTgha Nikaya. Sumahga- 

 lavifasini. and the other, the Paramaithajotika. the canonical 

 Commentary on the JJclana. These Commentaries took their 

 present form in Pali under the guidance of the celebrated monk 

 Buddhaghosa early in the fifth century of our era, mostly from 

 Sinhala sources available to him. Each of these commentaries 

 suggests various dishes as possibilities. Both include pork and an 

 "elixir" (a chemical preparation) in the list of choices. The 

 canonical Pali Commentary on the Dlgha Nikaya adds soft rice 

 wuh the broth of the five products of the cow. The canonical 

 Pali Commentary on the Uc/ana, deriving its authority from the 

 Great Commentary (now lost) that dates from the third century 

 B.C., offers two further choices: bamboo shoots (sprouts) trod- 

 den by pigs, and mushrooms grow n on a spot trodden hy /)igs. 



That the Buddha was eating his last meal was known to every- 

 one thereabouts: nothing that happened there could have es- 

 caped those within eye-reach nor have been forgotten by them, 

 not least because of the awesome event to take place a few hours 

 later, the Buddha's translation to Nirvana that he had been pre- 

 dicting for that night since he was in Vai'sali three months 

 before. 



Dr. Stella Kramrisch, building on the work of the late Profes- 

 sor Roger Heim and me in eastern India, has identified with 

 finality the sukara-maddava as the Puiika,^ a plant that figures 

 conspicuously in the Brahmanas and other early post-Vedic 

 sacred Sanskrit texts. In this paper I will examine the Last Meal 

 at Pava and the death of Gautama the Buddha at Kusinara in 

 what is today northern Bihar. 1 will focus attention on what he 

 ate at his Last Meal— a matter of little theological importance to 

 the Theravadin branch of Buddhism and none at all to the Bud- 

 dhists of the Greater Vehicle, but pertinent to our mushroomic 

 inquiries and notably, as I shall show, to the identity of Soma. 



Of all the scholars who have dealt with the Last Meal of the 

 Buddha, I believe only one, Andre Bareau, has addressed him- 

 self to the surprising anomaly offered by the possibility of either 

 pork or mushrooms being served to the Buddha at this meal. 

 Here is what Bareau has to say: 



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