Far Eastern and Classical Antiquity 21 



" the fire-fly appearing and disappearing amid darkness " is again 

 described. 



Finally at a later period, in the Sarvadarsana Sangraha, a treatise 

 dealing with various schools of philosophy in India, by the cele- 

 brated scholar of the fourteenth century a. d., Madhava Acharya, we 

 find the expression " many firefly-like pleasures." This is apparently 

 a comparison of pleasures to fireflies, both of which are transient.^^ 



In the Buddhist scriptures, the Dhammapada, the Pali word, 

 khajjopakana, is used for firefly and the following statement ^* 

 occurs: " Disciples of the Possessor of the Ten Forces multiplied 

 and gods and men innumerable descended upon Holy Ground, . . . 

 But as for the heretics, lost to them were gain and honor alike, even 

 as fire-flies lose their brilliance before the coming of the sun. . . ." 



The position of firefly light in a scale of brightness is indicated in 

 Further Dialogues of the Buddha translated by Lord Chalmers from 

 the Pali of Majjhima Nikaya.*^ This excerpt *® contains a series of 

 comparisons in which a heretic's perfection is likened to a gem. But 

 the gem is admitted to shine and sparkle less than " the firefly of the 

 night," the firefly less than a lamp, the lamp less than a conflagra- 

 tion in the night, the conflagration less than the morning stars at 

 dawn in a cloudless sky, these less than the full moon in a clear 

 sky at midnight, this less than the sun at his zenith at the end of 

 the rains, and this last less than many, very many, deities, " so lumin- 

 ous in themselves that they draw no light from sun or moon." At 

 the end of the series it is repeated that the heretic's perfection is 

 " less than, and inferior to, a firefly." 



These extracts will illustrate the place which the commonest and 

 most striking luminous animal has occupied in ancient Indian litera- 

 ture. It is interesting to note two points. The first is emphasis on 

 the ephemeral nature of the firefly, which appears at certain seasons 

 for a few weeks and then disappears, to live out its life cycle as a 



" See the E. B. Cowell and A. E. Gough translation, 171, London, 1882. Dham- 

 mahada 3: 178. 



"See Burlingame, E. W., Buddhist legends 3 (Harvard Oriental Series 30: 19, 1921) . 

 Gautama Budda lived ca. 562-482 b. c, the same general period as Pythagoras (582- 

 500 b. c.) in Greece, Confucius (550-478 b. c.) in China, and Zoroaster (before 500 b. c.) 

 in Persia. 



"2: 18 (Majjhima Nikaya II, 40) . 



*^ Another version of the story is given by H. C. Warren in Buddhism in translation, 

 Harvard Oriental Series 3, 1900. In Chapter XIII of the " Visuddhi Magga " of the 

 Pali Scriptures, dealing with Meditation and Nirvana, occurs the statement: '* Now 

 the power possessed by members of other sects to perceive former states of existence 

 resembles the light of a glow-worm; that of the ordinary disciples, the light of a lamp; 

 that of the great disciples, the light of a torch; that of the chief disciples, the light of 

 the morning star; that of the Private Buddhas, the light of the moon; that of the 

 Buddhas resembles the thousand-rayed disk of the autumnal sun." 



