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Mahākāḷa

1. Mahākāḷa Thera.– He belonged to a merchant family of Setabyā, and, while on a journey to Sāvatthi with five hundred carts, he heard the Buddha teach at Jetavana and entered the Order. He lived in the charnel field meditating, and, one day, the crematrix Kāḷā, noticing him, arranged the limbs of a recently cremated body near the Thera that he might gaze at them. With these as a topic of meditation, he soon became an Arahant.

Thag.vss.151 f; his story is given in much greater detail at DhA.i.66 ff; there he is said to have been the eldest of three brothers, of whom the others were Majjhimakāḷa and Cūḷakāḷa. He went with the latter to Sāvatthi, where both of them joined the Order. After becoming an Arahant, Mahākāḷa went with the Buddha to Setabyā and dwelt in the Siṃsapāvana, Cūḷakāḷa accompanying him. Cūḷakāḷa’s wives invited the Buddha and the other monks to a meal, and he himself went on earlier to make arrangements. His wives disrobed him. At the end of the meal, Mahākāḷa was left behind by the Buddha to make the thanksgiving. His eight wives surrounded him and stripped him of his robes, but, knowing their intention, he disappeared through the air.

Ninety-one world-cycles ago, while wandering near the mountain Urugana, he saw the rag robe of an ascetic and offered three kinkiṇika flowers in its honour (ThagA.i.271 f). He is probably identical with Paṃsukūlapūjaka Thera of the Apadāna. Ap.ii.434; but see ThagA.i.79, where the same Apadāna verses are quoted.

2. Mahākāḷa.– A lay disciple (upāsaka) of Sāvatthi who was a Stream-winner (sotāpanna). One day he took the uposatha vows and, having listened throughout the night to the teaching, was washing his face in the pool near Jetavana early the next morning, when thieves who had broken into a house and were being pursued put their stolen goods near him and ran away. He, being taken for a thief, was beaten to death. When this was reported to the Buddha, he related a story of the past in which Mahākāḷa had been a forest guard of the king of Bārāṇasī. One day he saw a man entering the forest road with his beautiful wife and, falling in love with the wife, invited them to his house. He then had a gem placed in the man’s cart, and the latter was beaten to death as a thief. DhA.iii.149 ff.

3. Mahākāḷa.– A Nāga king who dwelt in the Mañjerika Nāgabhavana. When the Buddha, after eating the meal given by Sujātā, launched the bowl up stream, it travelled a short way and then stopped, having reached the Nāga’s abode under the Nerañjarā, and then came into contact with the bowls similarly launched by the three previous Buddhas of this world-cycle. To the Nāga because of his long life it seemed that the previous Buddha had died only the preceding day, and he rejoiced to think that another had been born. He went therefore to the scene of the Buddha’s Enlightenment with his Nāga maidens and they sang the Buddha’s praises. J.i.70, 72; this incident is among those sculpturally represented in the Relic Chamber of the Mahā Thūpa (Mhv.xxxi.83); see also Dvy.392; Mtu.ii.265, 302, 304.

Kāḷa’s life span was one world-cycle; therefore he saw all the four Buddhas of this world-cycle, and when Asoka wished to see the form of the Buddha, he sent for Mahākāḷa, who created for him a beautiful figure of the Buddha, complete in every detail (Mhv.v.87 f; Sp.i.43, etc.)

When the Buddha’s relics, deposited at Rāmagāma, were washed away, Mahākāḷa took the basket containing them into his abode and there did them honour until they were removed, against his will, by Soṇuttara. Mhv.xxxi.25 ff.

4. Mahākāla.– A householder of Bandhumati in the time of Vipassī Buddha. He was a previous birth of Aññā-Koṇḍañña. He and his brother Cūḷakāḷa gave the first fruits of their harvest, in nine stages of its growth, to the Buddha. AA.i.79 ff; ThagA.ii.1 f.

5. Mahākāḷa.– One of the seven mountains surrounding Gandhamādana. SNA.i.66; J.v.38.