ABSTRACT
The Sutta NipAta of the Pali Canon is generally held by scholars to be one of the oldest extant Buddhist texts. At the very end of the Sutta NipAta, in a section also held to be among the oldest strata of that text, is a wonderfully moving and, I think, potentially significant discussion. A Brahmin named Piógiya ‘the wise’ praises the Buddha in heartfelt terms:
They call him Buddha, Enlightened, Awake, dissolving darkness, with total vision, and knowing the world to its ends. . . . This man . . . is the man I follow. . . . This prince, this beam of light, Gotama, was the only one who dissolved the darkness. This man Gotama is a universe of wisdom and a world of understanding.1
