attack suffered by the Buddha was sudden; it was violent; it 

 alarmed the whole company; it was virtually o\cr quickly, for 

 not long afterward the Buddha instructed the faithful Ananda 

 that they should walk on to Kusinara close by. But what could 

 be more natural than a violent reaction in one brought up as a 

 ksatri\a to consider mushrooms inedible? And with his large 

 intestine being chronicall}' inflamed with dysentery, his diar- 

 rhoea was a natural sequence. "Dysentery" is a translation of the 

 Pali /ohifa-pakkhatu/ika, which means "bloody flux" in old- 

 fashioned English. 



The account in the Dii^ha Nikliya is as though written to order 

 for this explanation. Two quatrains, apparently independent of 

 each other, are inserted in the text of the DTi^ha Nikliya (para. 

 20, p. 1 39) at this point. Buddhaghosa adds a note: "It should be 

 understood that these are the \erses b}' the Thcras [Elders] who 

 held the Council"— the Council that took place at Riijagrha. at 

 which some months later the initial plans were laid for mobiliz- 

 ing detailed recollections of the Buddha's teachings and for 

 organizaing the Buddhist religion. The first quatrain shows how 

 those present murmured against Cunda, and, according to the 

 second, there was also murmuring about the mushrooms. Here 

 are the quatrains in the Rhys Da\ ids translation: 



When he had eaten C'unda's food. 

 The copper-smith's thus ha\e 1 heard - 

 He bore with fortitude the pain. 

 The sharp pain e\en unto death. 



4< ti * 



When he had eaten, from the mushrooms [=siikara-nuuUla\a] 

 in the food 



There fell upcm tlie Teacher sickness dire. 

 Then after nature was relie\ed the fxaltcd One 



announced and said: 

 I now am going on to Kusinara. 



After the episode the Exalted One went out of his way to exon- 

 erate Cunda of blame, thus making even more tenable my 

 explanation of his illness. For if Cunda had been guilty of negli- 



234 



