Place · ancient Kosala city · India
Shrāvastī
The ancient Kosala city, 170 kilometres north of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, where the Buddha spent twenty-four rainy-season retreats — more than at any other place — at the Jetavana monastery donated by the banker Anathapindika. The Twin Miracle (Yamaka Patihariya), in which the Buddha produced fire and water from his body simultaneously, is set here. The excavated monastery contains the Buddha's Gandhakuti (Perfumed Chamber), the Anandabodhi tree planted by Ananda, and foundations of two dozen stupas. The city is one of the eight 'miracle' pilgrimage additions to the four core sites of the Buddhist landscape.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Tradition
- Pali canon
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 27.520, 82.050
Connections (2)
- Life routeRājagriha / Rajgir
Rajagriha was the Magadhan capital and Shravasti the capital of Kosala, the other great power of the day, and the Buddha moved between the two for decades — spending most rainy seasons at the Jetavana monastery at Shravasti, which the merchant Anathapindika is said to have bought by covering the ground in gold coin. The early sangha was a creature of these two cities and of the road between them.
- Mythic sequenceSānkāshya / Sankisa
Shrāvastī holds the twin miracle and Sānkāshya the descent that followed it — he is said to have gone up to teach his mother and come down on a triple ladder. The two sites complete the four miracle places that turn the four life-events into a circuit of eight. Sānkāshya is the least excavated of the eight and the least visited; an Ashokan elephant capital on a mound is most of what stands there.
On these journeys
- Eight Great Places (Buddhist)
- Dakshiṇāpatha — the Great Southern Road
- Faxian — overland to India, home by sea (399–414)
- Xuanzang — sixteen years overland (629–645)
Sources
Sravasti — ASI; Eight Great Places
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