The Koliyans were south-eastern neighbors of the Sakyans, with whom they had close ties in marriage and customs. | Haliddavasana (“yellow-clothes”) is also the scene of MN 57, which also discusses similarities and differences between Buddhism and wanderers when it comes to practice.

The divine meditations have not been traced as a group in pre-Buddhist texts. However, they are shared with later non-Buddhist texts such as Yogasūtra 1.33 and the Jain Tattvārthasūtra 7.11. See too the description in Ācārāṅgsūtra 1.8.4.14 of Mahāvīra meditating “above. below, around”, a phrase associated with non-violence to all creatures.

Regarding the “apexes” of the divine meditations in this discourse, Bodhi (Connected Discourses) says they are “puzzling”; his note to this passage gives the commentarial explanation, which he describes as “laboured”. It seems this question was discussed in other traditions too, for Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra 33 says that the highest potential of the release by love is rebirth as one of the gods of universal beauty (subhakiṇha), who are reborn in that realm due to the practice of the third absorption.

Also at DN 28:18.9, MN 152:11–15.3, AN 5.144:2.2, SN 52.1:4.2, SN 54.8:7.1.