Keṇiya features also in the Vinaya, where at this point he offered the Buddha and the Sangha a drink in the evening, reasoning that the Brahmanical sages of the past did likewise (Kd 6:35.1.2). As a result, the Buddha allowed fruit juice and other drinks in the evening.

“Manual preparations” is kāyaveyyāvaṭikaṁ. Ten kinds of service are enumerated in the Jain Tattvārthasūtra 9.24.

Anāthapiṇḍika responded in the same way when hearing of the Buddha (Kd 16:4.2.10). Also compare Bāvari’s elation at Snp 5.1:19.1.

Durāsada (“intimidating”) is also at AN 4.42:4.1, which shows that the sense is that they are hard to defeat in debate.

This idea is not found elsewhere in the Pali.

While the content of the text is identical with MN 92, the current text has more tags identifying the speakers.

This is of course a reference to the first sermon (SN 56.11).

The title “General of the Dhamma” belongs to Sāriputta (Ud 2.8:16.2, Thag 18.1:33.1).

Anujāta is said at Iti 74:4.1 to be a child who “takes after” the good qualities of their parents.

As at MN 91:31.5.

Abhiṇhaso means “repeatedly”. Here the force of the saying is, I think, “It is hard enough to encounter a Buddha even once, let alone repeatedly.”

The “dark class” refers to those born in an unfortunate state (AN 6.57:11.1). Sela is saying that the Buddha’s path is for everyone, not just the fortunate.

Mukha means originally “mouth”, hence “opening”, “entrance”; but also “face”, hence “front”, “foremost”. The fire is the foremost sacrifice, but fire is also a “mouth”, since “however much one may put into a fire, it burns it all up all” (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 5.14.8). This sense of “consume” or “subsume” is alive in these verses as well. For example, the Sāvitrī “subsumes” other hymns, for merely one line is equivalent to all three Vedas (BU 5.14.2). The sense of mukha as “entrance, introduction” also applies, since the fire sacrifice and the Sāvitrī are the things first learned by a new student (Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 11.5.4.12). Fire is also the “first” creation, and hence the oldest of rituals (ŚB 6.1.1.11). | Yaññā is a truncated genitive plural (“of sacrifices”).

The Sāvitrī is a famous verse recited daily by brahmin priests at dawn: “Might we make our own that desirable effulgence of god Savitar, who will rouse forth our insights (Rig Veda 3.62.10, Jamison/Brereton). It was the “head” of metres (śiro gāyatryaḥ, ŚB 8.6.2.3, 8.6.2.6), and was “praised as the foremost of recitations” (gāyatrāṇy uktha mukhanai śaṁsanti, Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa 17.7.1). “Prayers”, furthermore, are born “from the mouth” (mukhato, ŚB 11.5.4.17). The Sāvitrī is the chief exponent of the gāyatrī metre, by which it is sometimes known. The three-lined gāyatrī is the “first” of poetic styles, both technically—as it is the shortest from which others were derived (ŚB 1.3.4.6, 1.6.2.10)—and historically, as it dominated the Rig Veda but fell out of fashion later. | Chandas can be either “meter” in general, or a metrical song of praise, especially a Vedic hymn (eg. ŚB 11.5.7.3). The Sāvitrī is a Vedic text, not a meter, so the latter meaning must apply here. It is a collective singular.

This verse and the next are also at Snp 3.6:49.1.