Buddha was 6 feet 7?
Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 10:55 pm
Hello Dhamma friends. Some of you may or may not find this interesting.
II. Controversial points: Sugata measures.
The Commentary to Sg 6 states that the Buddha's cubit — the distance from his bent elbow to the tips of his fingers — was three times that of a normal man. This puts all the sugata measures — based on the Buddha's cubit, handspan, and breadth of his fingers — at three times normal length and makes the Buddha freakishly tall.
How the Commentary arrived at this figure is hard to say, for the Vinaya-mukha cites several passages from the Canon showing that the Buddha, though tall, was not abnormally so. The most telling passage is the one from DN 2, in which King Ajātasattu visits the Buddha while the latter is sitting in an assembly of bhikkhus, and the king is unable to identify which member of the assembly the Buddha is. This, of course, is meant to indicate the king's spiritual blindness, but if the Buddha had been remarkably tall it would have been part of his general reputation, and the king would not have had to ask.
The Vinaya-mukha then goes on to suggest a variety of ways of calculating the Buddha's measurements, the most useful being to assume the Buddha's cubit to be 50 cm. This, at least roughly, fits a number of passages from the Canon, as follows:
According to DN 30, the spread of the Buddha's arms, outstretched, was equal to his height. Because a person's cubit is one-fourth the spread of his outstretched arms, this would put the Buddha's height at 2 meters, or approximately 6 feet 7 inches. The origin story to Pc 92 states that his half-brother, Nanda, was four fingerbreadths shorter than he, and that when bhikkhus saw him coming from afar, they would mistake him for the Buddha, partly on the basis of his tall height. One fingerbreadth is said to be 1/24 cubit, or a little more than 2 cm. by this reckoning, which would put Nanda at 1.92 meters, or approximately 6 feet 4 inches tall.
These figures would seem to fit the information in the Canon fairly well, in that they allow for both Nanda and the Buddha to be tall but not outlandishly so.
Another pair of passages supporting these measurements is the ruling under Pc 87 that the legs of a bhikkhu's bed not be more than eight sugata fingerbreadths tall, taken together with the recommendation at Cv.VIII.1.5 that one should grope under the bed with one's hand to make sure that nothing is there before placing one's bowl there. Our measurements would put the maximum height for the bed legs at 18 cm. If they were much taller than that, there would be no need to grope, for one could easily see under the bed with a glance. If they were much shorter than that, even a small bowl wouldn't fit.
Although there is no way of determining the sugata measures with 100% accuracy, the above considerations suggest that the following estimates are reasonable:
The sugata cubit = 50 cm.
The sugata span = 25 cm.
The sugata fingerbreadth = 2.08 cm.
Applied to the various rules, this would give us a hut 3 x 1.75 meters — small, but adequate; a rains-bathing cloth 1.5 x .625 meters — enough to cover one from the waist to the knees; and an skin-eruption covering cloth 1 x .5 meters — enough to cover one from the waist to just above the knees. All of these figures seem appropriate and so have been accepted for the purposes of this book.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... .ch12.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
II. Controversial points: Sugata measures.
The Commentary to Sg 6 states that the Buddha's cubit — the distance from his bent elbow to the tips of his fingers — was three times that of a normal man. This puts all the sugata measures — based on the Buddha's cubit, handspan, and breadth of his fingers — at three times normal length and makes the Buddha freakishly tall.
How the Commentary arrived at this figure is hard to say, for the Vinaya-mukha cites several passages from the Canon showing that the Buddha, though tall, was not abnormally so. The most telling passage is the one from DN 2, in which King Ajātasattu visits the Buddha while the latter is sitting in an assembly of bhikkhus, and the king is unable to identify which member of the assembly the Buddha is. This, of course, is meant to indicate the king's spiritual blindness, but if the Buddha had been remarkably tall it would have been part of his general reputation, and the king would not have had to ask.
The Vinaya-mukha then goes on to suggest a variety of ways of calculating the Buddha's measurements, the most useful being to assume the Buddha's cubit to be 50 cm. This, at least roughly, fits a number of passages from the Canon, as follows:
According to DN 30, the spread of the Buddha's arms, outstretched, was equal to his height. Because a person's cubit is one-fourth the spread of his outstretched arms, this would put the Buddha's height at 2 meters, or approximately 6 feet 7 inches. The origin story to Pc 92 states that his half-brother, Nanda, was four fingerbreadths shorter than he, and that when bhikkhus saw him coming from afar, they would mistake him for the Buddha, partly on the basis of his tall height. One fingerbreadth is said to be 1/24 cubit, or a little more than 2 cm. by this reckoning, which would put Nanda at 1.92 meters, or approximately 6 feet 4 inches tall.
These figures would seem to fit the information in the Canon fairly well, in that they allow for both Nanda and the Buddha to be tall but not outlandishly so.
Another pair of passages supporting these measurements is the ruling under Pc 87 that the legs of a bhikkhu's bed not be more than eight sugata fingerbreadths tall, taken together with the recommendation at Cv.VIII.1.5 that one should grope under the bed with one's hand to make sure that nothing is there before placing one's bowl there. Our measurements would put the maximum height for the bed legs at 18 cm. If they were much taller than that, there would be no need to grope, for one could easily see under the bed with a glance. If they were much shorter than that, even a small bowl wouldn't fit.
Although there is no way of determining the sugata measures with 100% accuracy, the above considerations suggest that the following estimates are reasonable:
The sugata cubit = 50 cm.
The sugata span = 25 cm.
The sugata fingerbreadth = 2.08 cm.
Applied to the various rules, this would give us a hut 3 x 1.75 meters — small, but adequate; a rains-bathing cloth 1.5 x .625 meters — enough to cover one from the waist to the knees; and an skin-eruption covering cloth 1 x .5 meters — enough to cover one from the waist to just above the knees. All of these figures seem appropriate and so have been accepted for the purposes of this book.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... .ch12.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I'm two metres tall too.
