Reading guide
A named individual, not a group
Every deity discourse so far in this vagga has featured either an unnamed single deity, an unnamed collective host, or a specific but unnamed class (the Pure Abode deities, the fault-finders). This discourse is the first to name its speaker personally, and by parentage — ‘Pajjunna's daughter’ identifies her specifically as the offspring of Pajjunna, a deity elsewhere associated with rain.
Naming herself, mid-speech
Kokanadā's own verse names herself in the third person even as she speaks — ‘Kokanadā am I who worships him’ — a somewhat unusual self-referential convention, closer to formal self-introduction than to the anonymous questions most deities in this collection ask.
From hearsay to witnessed knowledge
Her second verse draws a specific epistemological distinction: ‘previously I had only heard the teaching realized by the Clear-eyed One’; now, listening to the Buddha teach directly, she knows it ‘as a witness’ (sakkhi) — a distinction between secondhand report and personally verified knowing, made explicit rather than assumed.
Denouncing the teaching, and its stated cost
The closing two verses contrast sharply: those who go about denouncing the teaching of the noble ones fall to the ‘terrible Hell of Screams’ (roruva) and suffer there long, while those who find acceptance and peace in the same teaching swell the hosts of gods after this life. The consequence named is specifically for denunciation of the teaching, not for unrelated wrongdoing.
Key terms
The text
Kokanadā arrives at Vesālī
§1So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Vesālī, at the Great Wood, in the hall with the peaked roof. Then, late at night, the glorious Kokanadā, Pajjunna’s daughter, lighting up the entire Great Wood, went up to the Buddha, bowed, stood to one side, and recited these verses in the Buddha’s presence:
§2“Staying in the woods of Vesālī is the Buddha, best of creation. Kokanadā am I who worships him, Kokanadā, Pajjuna’s daughter.
From hearsay to witnessed knowledge
§3Previously I had only heard the teaching realized by the Clear-eyed One. But now I know it as a witness while the sage, the Holy One teaches.
Two fates, contrasted
§4There are simpletons who go about denouncing the teaching of the noble ones. They fall into the terrible Hell of Screams where they suffer long.
§5There are those who have found acceptance and peace in the teaching of the noble ones. After giving up this human body, they swell the hosts of gods.”
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