The Buddha's cousin and attendant whose memory reportedly preserved most of the sermons
Ananda served the Buddha for 25 years, fetching water, guarding his door at night and once stepping in front of a rampaging elephant. After his teacher died, tradition says he recited the discourses from memory, which is why Buddhists call him the Treasurer of the Dhamma.
His name means bliss or joy. One tradition says relatives rejoiced at his birth; another says he was born on the very night the Buddha attained enlightenment, making him far younger than his cousin. The early texts back the second version in places, including a verse where Ananda describes 25 years as a learner followed by 25 years of service. His father is named as Amitodana or Sukhodana, in either case a brother of the Buddha's father Suddhodana.
Ordained with other Sakya princes in the mango grove of Anupiya, he reached the first stage of awakening under the teacher Punna Mantaniputta and formed a warm friendship with Sariputta. When the Buddha, then 55, asked for a permanent attendant, senior disciples volunteered while Ananda stayed silent, saying the Buddha would know whom to pick. He accepted on conditions: no robes or food given to him personally, but the right to ask questions and to hear again any sermon he had missed.
He became the go-between for monks, lay followers and the Buddha. His best-known intervention was pleading for the Buddha's foster-mother Mahapajapati Gotami to be ordained, which opened the way for an order of nuns. Nuns honoured him for it from early medieval times, though at the First Council Mahakassapa and other monks rebuked him for that very request and for lapses in serving his teacher.
Tradition holds he reached enlightenment only just before the council opened, a condition for taking part. He died twenty years after the Buddha, and his pupils went on to lead later councils. Scholars doubt much of this story, especially the First Council itself. His emotional attachment made him a human counterpoint to the Buddha, and his legend later inspired Richard Wagner and Rabindranath Tagore.
Source: Ānanda
