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 2347

106
THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA.
III, 4, 5.
of Karma that beings in purgatory, though they burn for thousands of years, yet are they not destroyed. If they are reborn there, there do they grow up, and there do they die. For this, O king, has been declared by the Blessed One: "He does not die until that evil Karma is exhausted.”'
Very good, Nagasena !'
5. The king said : Venerable Nâgasena, your people say that the world rests on water, the water on air, the air on space'. This saying also I cannot believe.
Then the Elder brought water in a regulation water-pot?, and convinced king Milinda, saying : *As this water is supported by the atmosphere, so is that water supported by air.'
Very good, Nâgasena!'
6. The king said : ‘Is cessation Nirvana 3?' Yes, your Majesty' (69). How is that, Nagasena ?' *All foolish individuals, O king, take pleasure in
· This is not a distinctively Buddhist belief. It was commonly held at the time by other teachers. Compare . Book of the Great Decease,' III, 13 in Buddhist Suttas,' Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi, p. 45).
* Dhamma-karakena. The passages show that this was a pot so made, that no water could pass from it except through a filtering medium. When not being actually used the water was no doubt kept at a certain height in it by the pressure of the atmosphere. I do not know of any specimen preserved in our modern museums or figured on ancient bas-reliefs, and the exact shape is unknown. It must be different from the one represented in plate xlviii of Cunningham's Bhilsa Tope.' See Kullavagga V, 13, 1 (note); VI, 21, 3 ; XII, 2, 1; Mahavamsa, p. 60.
"Nirodho nibbanan ti.
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