The story in outline
Sankassa, spelled in several ways including Sankissa and Sankasya, is the place where Buddhist tradition says the Buddha came down to earth after spending a rains retreat in a heavenly realm. The story is one of the better-known miracle narratives in the tradition, and the descent from heaven is an episode that later sources return to again and again.
In the usual telling, the Buddha spent the three months of the rains retreat in the heaven of the thirty-three gods, Tavatimsa, where his mother, who had died soon after his birth, had been reborn as a deity. There he taught the Abhidhamma, the analytic teachings, to her and to the assembled gods. At the end of the retreat he returned to the human world and landed at Sankassa. Accounts speak of precious stairways or ladders, with gods and Brahma accompanying him, and of crowds, including monks and lay people, waiting to greet him.
This is a narrative from tradition, and it is told within a devotional and cosmological framework. This article describes the tradition as tradition and does not present it as an historical event that can be checked.
Which texts tell it
The story is not found in one single place. Several kinds of sources contribute:
- Pali commentarial literature, which gives the fullest narrative of the retreat, the teaching to the Buddha’s mother and the return
- Sanskrit and other Indian Buddhist texts, which tell related versions with differences in detail
- Early Buddhist art, which seems to show the theme of the descent by stairway
The Pali Canon itself mentions Sankassa as a town where the Buddha and monks stayed, but the full descent narrative in its familiar form is generally associated with later commentary. Scholars note that versions vary on points such as which heaven he visited, how long he stayed and how the stairs are described. Readers should expect differences rather than a single standard account. For the wider setting, Buddhist cosmology explains how realms such as Tavatimsa are understood in Buddhist texts.
Why a heavenly retreat
The story links to two other strands of the tradition. The first concerns the Buddha’s mother: according to the usual account she died a few days after his birth, and the descent tradition says he repaid his debt of gratitude by teaching her. The second is the tradition of miracles that followed the twin miracle at Sravasti. In many tellings the descent comes after that public display, linking the two episodes into a sequence.
Different Buddhist communities draw different lessons. Some stress filial gratitude, others the authority of the Abhidhamma, and others simply the sense of wonder. Practice and emphasis vary by country and tradition.
Pilgrims who recorded the place
Written accounts by Chinese pilgrim monks give much of what is known about how the site was understood in the first millennium CE. Faxian, who travelled in the early fifth century, and Xuanzang, who followed in the seventh, both describe Sankassa. They mention monasteries, shrines linked with the stairways, and an Ashokan pillar topped by an animal. Their descriptions are valuable but written from memory and from the reports of local monks, so they should be read as testimony rather than measurement.
The pillar capital, an elephant, is a surviving artefact that can still be seen at the site. It is enough here to note that the pillar is one of the few physical links between the textual story and the place.
From text to place
The identification of the Sankassa site with the village now called Sankisa was made in the nineteenth century by British archaeologists working from the Chinese pilgrim accounts. Identifications of this kind rest on matching distances and descriptions, and are generally accepted for Sankisa, though the precise layout of the ancient town is not fully known. Excavation has been limited, so a lot remains uncertain.
Sankassa is sometimes listed among the places where Buddhist tradition says the Buddha performed notable deeds. Lists differ between traditions, so do not assume that it belongs to any fixed set of sites or that it is part of the four holy places most often cited for pilgrimage.
Reading the tradition carefully
If you are interested in this story, the best approach is to keep three layers apart: what a text says, what a pilgrim wrote he saw, and what archaeology has actually found. They support each other in some respects and not in others. Treating the descent as a living tradition for Buddhists, and as a subject of historical study for everyone, is accurate on both counts.