In many Theravāda temples, two monks stand on either side of the Buddha image: one on the right, one on the left. They are Sāriputta and Mahā Moggallāna, the two chief disciples (aggasāvaka) of the Buddha. Their story is one of deep friendship, sincere searching, and a few words of Dhamma that changed two lives.
Two friends from Rājagaha
According to the commentaries, the two were born on the same day in neighbouring brahmin villages near Rājagaha, the capital of the kingdom of Magadha. Sāriputta was first called Upatissa, and Moggallāna was called Kolita. The two boys grew up as inseparable friends.
The tradition tells that, as young men, they were watching a festival performance on a hilltop. This time each sat silent, with the same thought: in a hundred years, all these people will be gone. Is there something beyond birth and death? They agreed to leave home and seek the deathless together.
They first studied under the wandering teacher Sañcaya, but his teaching did not satisfy them. So they made a pact: whoever first found a true teacher would tell the other.
Meeting Assaji
One morning in Rājagaha, Upatissa saw a monk on his alms round whose calm and dignified bearing struck him deeply. This was Assaji, one of the first five disciples who had heard the Buddha’s first sermon, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta. Upatissa waited respectfully, then asked who his teacher was.
Assaji humbly replied that he was only newly ordained and could not explain the teaching in detail, but he could give its meaning in brief. The verse he spoke, preserved in the Vinaya (Mahāvagga I), became one of the most famous in the Buddhist world:
Ye dhammā hetuppabhavā, tesaṃ hetuṃ tathāgato āha;
Of things that arise from a cause, the Tathāgata has told the cause, and also how they cease. This is the teaching of the Great Renunciant. — Vinaya, Mahāvagga I
tesañca yo nirodho, evaṃvādī mahāsamaṇo.
On hearing these few lines, Upatissa’s mind opened and he attained the first stage of awakening, stream-entry. The verse points straight to the heart of dependent origination: whatever arises does so because of conditions, and when the conditions end, it ends. He hurried to tell Kolita, who on hearing the same verse also entered the stream. Sañcaya declined to join them, but, as the texts relate, many of his students followed the two friends to the Buddha at the Bamboo Grove.
Foremost in wisdom and in psychic power
After ordination, Kolita — now Moggallāna — attained full awakening, arahantship, within about a week. Upatissa — now Sāriputta, “son of Sārī”, after his mother — attained arahantship about two weeks after ordination, while fanning the Buddha as he gave a discourse to the wanderer Dīghanakha (MN 74).
In the Aṅguttara Nikāya’s list of outstanding disciples, the Buddha named Sāriputta foremost among those of great wisdom, and Mahā Moggallāna foremost among those with psychic power. Their gifts complemented each other:
- Sāriputta was the great teacher and systematiser. Several important discourses in the Tipiṭaka are spoken by him, and the Buddha said he could turn the Wheel of Dhamma just as the Buddha himself had.
- Moggallāna was renowned for his mastery of concentration and the supernormal powers that can arise from it, which the texts describe him using to teach and to protect the Saṅgha.
- In the Saccavibhaṅga Sutta (MN 141), the Buddha compares Sāriputta to a mother who gives birth, and Moggallāna to a nurse who raises the child: one establishes students in the first fruit of the path, the other guides them to the highest goal.
Their friendship never turned into rivalry. Sāriputta was famous for his gratitude — tradition says he slept with his head towards wherever Assaji was staying, honouring the monk through whom he first heard the Dhamma.
Their final days
According to the tradition, both chief disciples passed away a short time before the Buddha’s own final Nibbāna. Sāriputta, knowing his life was ending, returned to his birth village to teach his mother, who had long resisted the Buddha’s teaching. The commentaries say she attained stream-entry, and he passed away peacefully in the room where he was born.
Moggallāna’s end was harder. The commentaries relate that he was attacked by bandits hired by rivals of the Buddha’s community. They explain it as the ripening of grave kamma from a former life. Having attained Nibbāna, he faced it without fear.
The relics at Sanchi
In the nineteenth century, British archaeologists opened a small stūpa at Sanchi in central India and found two stone caskets, inscribed with the names of Sāriputta and Mahā Moggallāna. The relics were taken to Britain, and after long requests from Buddhists they were returned in the late 1940s. They were displayed with great reverence in Sri Lanka and elsewhere before being enshrined again at Sanchi, where they are still honoured by pilgrims today.
What we can learn
The story of the two chief disciples reminds us that spiritual friendship (kalyāṇamittatā) is a precious support on the path. It shows the value of a sincere question, of patient searching, and of humility — Sāriputta, the wisest of disciples, never forgot the quiet monk who first showed him the way. And it shows how a single line of truth, heard with an open heart, can be enough to change everything.
Reflection: who has been a good friend to you on the path? Take a moment today to remember them with gratitude, as Sāriputta remembered Assaji.
