Reading guide
A pair, not an individual, closing the recognition-scene sequence
SN 21.5, 21.6, and 21.11 each featured a single mendicant approaching and being recognized; this discourse completes that structural sequence by applying the identical pattern to two companions together, a natural culmination given the saṃyutta's closing interest in relationships between disciples.
Companionship itself named as a specific achievement
The verse doesn't treat the two mendicants' friendship as incidental background to their individual attainments; it explicitly credits the true teaching with bringing them together and staying together for a long time, naming the companionship as something the Dhamma itself produced and sustained.
A shared teacher named directly in the closing verse
Mahākappina, the subject of the discourse immediately before this one, is named again here as the one who trained both companions well — connecting this closing discourse back to SN 21.11 rather than treating the two as unrelated.
Two levels of completion marked in a single colophon sequence
Where most saṃyutta-closing discourses in this collection mark only their own saṃyutta's end, this discourse's closing material states two distinct completions in sequence: the Linked Discourses on monks are complete, and then, separately, the Book of Causality is finished — confirming SN 21 closes not only Bhikkhusaṃyutta but the entire Nidānavagga spanning SN 12 through 21.
A fitting close to a saṃyutta built around named relationships
Having moved through Moggallāna and Sāriputta's partnership, the Buddha's own cousins, a beautiful mendicant and an ugly one, a gifted teacher, and a misunderstood solitary practitioner, this saṃyutta closes on companionship itself as its final subject — an apt ending for a collection organized around specific people and their relationships to each other and to the Buddha.
Key terms
The text
§1At Sāvatthī. Then two mendicants who were companions, protégés of Venerable Mahākappina, went to see the Buddha. The Buddha saw them coming off in the distance, and addressed the mendicants: “Mendicants, do you see those monks coming who are companions, protégés of Venerable Mahākappina?” “Yes, sir.” “Those mendicants are very mighty and powerful. It’s not easy to find an attainment that they have not already attained. And they’ve realized the supreme end of the spiritual path in this very life. They live having achieved with their own insight the goal for which gentlemen rightly go forth from the lay life to homelessness.”
§2That is what the Buddha said. Then the Holy One, the Teacher, went on to say:
§3“These companion mendicants have been together for a long time. The true teaching has brought them together, the teaching proclaimed by the Buddha.
§4They’ve been well trained by Kappina in the teaching proclaimed by the Noble One. They bear their final body, having vanquished Māra with his legions.”
§5 · ColophonThe Linked Discourses on monks are complete.
§6 · ColophonThe Book of Causality is finished.
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