Text of Confucianism Part 02

SR No.: 007676
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Legge
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1882
Total Pages: 2405
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 43 MB

Page 672

178
MAHÂVAGGA.
VIII, 1, 12.
setthi's wife: "We want one pasata' of ghee, Madam.' Then the setthi's wife ordered one pasata of ghee to be given to Glvaka Komârabhakka. And Givaka Komârabhakka boiled up that pasata of ghee with various drugs, ordered the setthi's wife to lie down on her back in the bed, and gave it her through her nose. And the butter given through the nose came out through the mouth. And the setthi's wife spat it out into the spittoon, and told the maid-servant :
Come, my girl, take this ghee up with a piece of cotton.
12. Then Givaka Komârabhakka thought: 'It is · astonishing how niggardly this house-wife is, in that she has this ghee, which ought to be thrown away, taken up with a piece of cotton. I have given her many highly precious drugs. What sort of fee will she give me?'
And the setthi's wife, when she observed the change of demeanour in Givaka Komârabhakka, said to Glvaka Komârabhakka : Why are you perplexed, doctor ? : 'I thought: “It is astonishing, &c.”'
Householders like us, doctor, know why to economize thus; this ghee will do for the servants or workmen to anoint their feet with, or it can be poured into the lamp. Be not perplexed, doctor, you will not lose your fee.'
One prasrita or prasriti ("handful') is said by the Sanskrit lexicographers to be equal to two palas. About the pala, which according to the ghee measure (ghrita pramâna) of Magadha was the thirty-second part of a prastha, see the Atharva-parisishta 35, 3, ap. Weber, Ueber den Vedakalender namens Jyotisham, p. 82. Compare also Rh. D., 'Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon,' pp. 18, 19.
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