Malaya Mahā Deva Thera untranslated

Malaya Mahā Deva Thera (v.l. Maliya Mahā Deva Thera, Malliyadeva Thera). An Arahant. During the Akkhakkhāyika famine, Duṭṭhagāmaṇī provided him and four others with a dish of sour millet gruel, which was purchased with the proceeds of the sale of the king’s earrings (Mhv.xxxii.30). Mahā Deva took his portion to Sumanakūṭa and shared it with nine hundred others (Mhv.xxxii.49). He was also among the eight Arahants who accepted a meal of pork from Sāliya in his previous birth as a blacksmith (Mhv­ṭ.606). He was probably so-called because he lived at Koṭapabbata in the Malaya country. Mhv­ṭ.606 he is called Koṭapabbatavāsika.

It is said that for three years after his ordination Mahā Deva lived in the Maṇḍalārāmaka vihāra (Mahā Deva called Maliyadeva in the context (AN­a.i.22), but further on in the same passage (p.23) he is addressed as Mahā Deva). One day, while going for alms in Kallagāma, near by, he was invited by an upāsikā to her dwelling, where she gave him a meal, and, regarding him as a son, invited him to take all his meals at her home. The invitation was accepted, and each day, after the meal, he would return thanks with the words “May you be happy and free from sorrow” (sukhaṁ hotu, dukkhā mucca). At the end of the rainy season he became an Arahant, and the chief incumbent of the Vihāra entrusted him with the task of preaching to the assembled people on the Pavāraṇa Day. The young novices informed the upāsikā that her “son” would preach that day, but she, thinking they were making fun of her, said that not everyone could preach. But they persuaded her to go to the vihāra, and, when the turn of Maliyadeva came, he preached all through the night. At dawn he stopped, and the upāsikā became a Sotāpanna.

Maliyadeva once preached the Chachakkasutta in the Lohāpāsāda, and sixty monks, who listened to him, became Arahants. He also preached the same Sutta in the Mahā Maṇḍapa, in the Mahā Vihāra, at Cetiyapabbata, at Sākyavaṁsa vihāra, at Kuṭāli vihāra, at Antarasobbha, Mutiṅgana, Vātakapabbata, Pācīnagharaka, Dīghavāpī, Lokaṇḍara, and Gameṇḍavāḷa, and, at each place, sixty monks attained Arahant-ship. At Cittalapabbata he saw a monk of over sixty preparing to bathe at Kuruvakatittha, and asked permission to bathe him. The Elder, discovering from his conversation that he was Maliyadeva, agreed to let him do so, though, he said, no one had ever touched his body during sixty years. Later in the day, the Elder begged Maliyadeva to preach to him, and this he did. Sixty monks, all over sixty, were among the audience, and at the conclusion of the Chachakkasutta they all became Arahants. The same thing happened at Tissa Mahā Vihāra, Kalyāṇi vihāra, Nāgamahā vihara, Kalacchagāma, and at other places, sixty in all (MN­a.ii.1024f).

Malaya Mahā Deva was among those various large groups who renounced the world in the company of the Bodhisatta: the Kuddāla samāgama, Mūgapakkha samāgama, Cūḷa Sutasoma samāgama, Ayogharapaṇḍita samāgama and Hatthipāla samāgama (Ja.iv.490; also vi.30, where Mahā Maliyadeva is called Kāḷavelavāsī). It is said (Vsm.241) that two monks once asked Malaya Mahā Deva for a subject of meditation, and that he gave them the formula of the thirty-two parts of the body. Though versed in the three Nikāyas, the monks could not become Sotāpannas until they had recited the formula for a period of four months.