[INDOLOGY] Resumption of 'In an oil vat'.

[alakendu das]

Dr.Karp Probably,Cunda Kamarputta may be translated as,"Cunda,son of a Black smith.            It may also be  rightly inferred that Mpsutta deals with Iron and not steel.Chronologically, India witnessed Iron age between 6th cent.BC- 2nd cent BC.               Alakendu Das.

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From: Artur Karp via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>
Sent: Thu, 13 Dec 2018 02:33:19 GMT+0530
To: indology <indology at list.indology.info>
Subject: [INDOLOGY] Resumption of 'In an oil vat'.

Dear List Members, 


A short fragment of the MPSutta (84–85,
90), the one that describes the last meal of the Buddha and his fatal illness,
mentions one person 23 times – by name and professional designation: cundo
kammāraputto, Cunda, the blacksmith. 

Is the number of these references not
significant? Some translators, perhaps not wanting to strain the readers’
patience, tend to reduce the phrase to the personal name only, as if the fact
that the Buddha’s host was a smith was an unimportant detail. Cunda
the blacksmith becomes Cunda. 

Oskar
von Hinüber is more radical. In his widely read and already classical paper (Cremated
like a King: The Funeral of the Buddha within the Ancient Indian Cultural
Context, ICPBS 2009) he does not mention Cunda, not even once. He refers
there to what he calls ‘a vessel made of iron and filled with sesame oil’;
a type of vat which, according to tradition, was used for cremating the bodies
of anointed kings – and, later on, of the Buddha himself. However, he does not
link the material from which such vessels were made with the person of a smith,
of an iron–maker appearing so conspicuously in the text. The majority of the
specialists (among them John Strong) write rather about ‘an iron oil
vessel/tub/vat’. But this is beyond the point. Von Hinüber’s attention is
directed at oil, not at iron. 

Apart
from iron, the text does not mention any other economically important metal -
neither copper nor bronze. 

In
this sense we may say that the MPSutta is dominated by iron –
and steel. 

Could
it be that the narrative relating the marvelous transformation of the Buddha’s
human body into the everlasting relics was based on the procedures of iron
smelting and hardening, the latter giving it, finally, the potential to create
everlasting forms? Could the fact that the burning out of the Buddha’s body is
stopped by cold water be devoid of any meaning?

These
are questions that – to my mind –
demand answers. They may lead to an entirely new approach to research on the
world of the MPSutta. 
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