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.