Moggallāna (Mahāmaudgalyāyana / Maudgalyāyana)

According to the canonical and commentarial materials cited, he was born with the personal name Kolita and became the monk Maudgalyāyana (Mahāmaudgalyāyana), one of the Buddha's closest disciples and paired structurally with Śāriputra as the two foremost male disciples. The Khuddaka-texts Vimanavatthu and Petavatthu present him as the monk who, after entering deep meditative absorption (jhāna), used his meditative/supernormal powers to go to the heavens, meet devas, and inspect the conditions of petas; he then reported what he had observed to the Buddha and the monastic community. These narrated journeys form the origin of the verses and stories in those collections and situate Moggallāna as the authorized eyewitness whose journeys legitimize the texts' moral teaching.

Canonical sources identify Moggallāna as an ordained bhikkhu and present him in monastic contexts rather than as a distinctively supernatural-looking being. The supplied materials do not give physical or extraordinary corporeal descriptions; instead, narratives habitually show him entering jhāna, departing and returning to the monastic assembly, and speaking to the Buddha and other monks about what he witnessed. Thus his appearance in the literature is that of a senior monk and narrator-figure who functions within monastic settings.

The Vimanavatthu and Petavatthu attribute to Moggallāna the capacity to enter deep meditative absorption (jhāna) and, by supernatural meditative power (abhiññā-like faculties as described in the texts), to travel to or perceive heavenly realms and to encounter devas and petas. He acts as an eyewitness reporter: after his journeys he recounts what he saw to the Buddha, who uses those accounts as moral exempla linking present conduct (kamma) to posthumous states (vipāka). The sources frame these abilities as meditative knowledge used pedagogically rather than as ongoing residence in other realms.