Zend Avesta Part 03

SR No.: 007673
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: L H Mills
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1887
Total Pages: 2618
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 49 MB

Page 2249

8
THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA.
1, 11.
in the Arahat, the Supreme Buddha), who would be able to talk with me, and resolve my doubts ?'
11. Thereupon the five hundred Yonakas said to Milinda the king : ‘There are the six Masters, O king !— Parana Kassapa, Makkhali of the cowshed , the Nigantha of the Nâta clan, Sañgaya the son of the Belattha woman, Agita of the garment of hair, and Pakudha Kakkayana. These are well known as famous founders of schools, followed by bands of disciples and hearers, and highly honoured by the people. Go, great king! put to them your problems, and have your doubts resolved ?'
12. So king Milinda, attended by the five hundred Yonakas, mounted the royal car with its splendid equipage, and went out to the dwellingplace of Parana Kassapa, exchanged with him the compliments of friendly greeting, and took his seat courteously apart. And thus sitting he said to
1 So called because he was said to have been born in a cowshed. See the Sumangala, p. 143. All these six teachers were contemporaries of the Buddha, and lived therefore about five hundred years before Milinda.
All this is a mere echo of the opening paragraphs in the Samañña-phala (D. 2), where Agatasattu is described as visiting these six famous sophists. And the plagiarism is all the more inartistic as the old names are retained, and no explanation is given of their being born twice at an interval of five hundred years. One may indeed ask what is a glaring anachronism to our good Buddhist romancer compared with the advantage of introducing the stock-names when he has to talk of heretics ? But the whole book is so full of literary skill, that it is at least strange that its author should have made this blunder; and there are other reasons for thinking the whole episode an interpolation. (See note on $$ 13, 15.) So that probably our $ 15 came originally immediately after § 10, and then (after the episode in $$ 15-36) $ 37 takes up the narrative interrupted at the end of $ 10.
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