will. A.L. Basham has remarked on this in The Wonder That 

 Was India, p. 327: 



The ancient mystical ph_\siolog\ of India needs turther slud\. not 

 only by professional Indologists, but by open-minded biologists 

 and psychologists, who may re\cal ihc true secret of the yog". For 

 uhatc\cr we ma_\ thinkjibout his spiritual claims there is no doubt 

 that the ad\anced \'ogi can hold his breath for \er\ long periods 

 without suffering mjur\ , can control the rhsthm of his own heart- 

 beats, can withstand extremes of heat and cold, can remain 

 healthv on a starxation diet, and. despite his austere and frugal life 

 and his remarkable ph\sical contortions, which would ruin the 

 systeni of an> ordinary man. can often sur\i\e to a \erv advanced 

 aue with lull use o\ his faculties. 



Basham fails to mention that occasionally death is the goal of 

 this "concentration," but there is no reason to question that 

 death can be the purpose of such an act of will, in recent years, 

 when death has been the end result of this manifestation of will 

 power, niahasaniadhi has sometimes been the term used when 

 speaking o{ it. 



The Buddha predicted the day of his death three months 

 before and thenceforward announced freely the time and place 

 of his own extinction. After his Last Meal the narrativ c says that 

 on his initiati\e he walked the distance to Kusinara. Since the 

 time o^ his death, no Hindu, no Buddhist, has ever suggested 

 that he died of mushroom poisoning. His death has not pro- 

 voked discussion among Buddhists. Knowing as we now do 

 what the mushrooms were that Cunda served, thev could have 

 provoked a stomach upset in a Hindu mycophobe but they 

 could not have caused his death. He died of his own will power, 

 of his own niahasaniadhi. Or, rather than provoking his own 

 death, did he not use yogic power, under trying circumstances, 

 to postpose his translation to nirvana until he had reached his 

 place of choice? 



* * * 



The surrogate for Soma explains and justifies the extraordi- 

 nary words used by the Buddha in limiting to himself alone this 

 dish. By consigning to a hole the surplus Puiika, he showed 

 himself familiar with its everyday properties. Now that we know 



237 



