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 2272

I, 38.
ÂYUPÂLA SILENCED.
31
Then the royal astrologer sent a message to Ayupala to the effect that king Milinda desired to call upon him. And the venerable one said : Let him come.'
So Milinda the king, attended by the five hundred Yonakas, mounted his royal chariot and proceeded to the Sankheyya hermitage, to the place where Âyupala dwelt, and exchanged with him the greetings and compliments of friendship and courtesy, and took his seat respectfully apart. And then he said to him :
38. Of what use, venerable Ayupala, is the renunciation of the world carried out by the members of your Order, and in what do you place the summum bonum ?'
Our renunciation, O king,' replied the Elder, 'is for the sake of being able to live in righteousness, and in spiritual calm. 'Is there, Sir, any layman who lives so ?'
Yes, great king, there are such laymen. At the time when the Blessed One set rolling the royal chariot wheel of the kingdom of righteousness at Benares, at the Deer Park, [20] eighteen kotis of the Brahma gods, and an innumerable company of other gods, attained to comprehension of the truth'. And not one of those beings, all of whom were laymen, had renounced the world. And again when the Blessed One delivered the Mahâ Samaya discourse, and the discourse on the 'Greatest Blessing 3,'
See my 'Buddhist Suttas,' pp. 153–155. There is nothing about the eighteen kotis in the Pitaka text referred to.
: No. 20 in the Digha Nikâya.
* In the Maha Mangala, translated in my "Buddhism,' pp. 125-127.
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