Vv 4Fourth Throne Mansion
Pāli / Sanskrit:Catutthapīṭhavimānavatthu
Arahant Moggallana asks a deva how he received a throne made of beryl gemstones.
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– VIMĀNA STORIES
– A. FEMALE DEVAS
– THE THRONE CHAPTER
1.4
BJT 23"Your throne is made of beryl, lofty and noble, moving at the speed of mind according to your wish. O lady, adorned, wearing a garland, clothed in beautiful garments, you shine like a flash of lightning upon the peak of a cloud.
BJT 24By what have you attained such a complexion as this? By what has this been accomplished for you here? And by what do pleasing enjoyments arise for you?
BJT 25O deity of great might, I ask you: 'When you were a human being, what meritorious deed did you do? By what do you have the might to shine so brilliantly, and your complexion illumines all the directions?'"
BJT 26That deity, delighted at being asked by Venerable Moggallāna, answered the question and explained to which deed this result belonged:
BJT 27"This is the result of a small deed of mine; by that I have the might to shine so brilliantly. I, when I was a human being in the human realm, in a previous life in the world of humans…
BJT 28…I saw a bhikkhu, one free from defilement, pure, undisturbed. With confidence, I with my own hands offered a seat to him.
BJT 29By that I have attained such a complexion as this. By that this has been accomplished for me here. And by that pleasing enjoyments arise for me.
BJT 30Venerable bhikkhu of great might, I have declared to you the meritorious deed I did when I was a human being. By that I have the might to shine so brilliantly, and my complexion illumines all the directions."
The Fourth Throne Mansion.
Translated by Bhikkhu Indacanda, 2011. Based on the Buddha Jayanthi edition of the Pali canon, as corrected by Bhikkhu Indacanda. Full text, translation, and notes are available at the translator's website: http://tamtangpaliviet.net/.
Used by kind permission of the translator.
Prepared for SuttaCentral by Blake Walsh.
The “…” is an abbreviation carried over from the Pāli original itself, called peyyāla. The early canon was memorized and recited, so passages repeated verbatim from a preceding discourse were commonly contracted to an elision mark rather than written out in full. Venerable Thích Minh Châu's translation preserves this convention. Some texts therefore look short — but that is the canonical form, not missing content or a truncated translation. The elided passages can be read in full in the preceding discourses of the same chapter.
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