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90
THE QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES
IV, 6, 59.
vessel it were heated could it be right to say that it had a soul. There cannot be two kinds of water --that which speaks, as it were, which is alive, and that which does not speak, and does not live. If all water were alive, then that which the great elephants, when they are in rut, suck up in their trunks, and pour out over their towering frames, or putting into their mouths take right into their stomachs—that water, too, when crushed flat between their teeth, would make a sound. And great ships, a hundred cubits long, heavily laden, full of hundreds of packages of goods, pass over the sea—the water crushed by them, too, would make sounds. [262] And mighty fish, leviathans with bodies hundreds of leagues long?, since they dwell in the great ocean, immersed in the depths of it, must, so living in it, be constantly taking into their mouths and spouting out the ocean—and that water, too, crushed between their gills or in their stomach, would make sounds. But as, even when tormented with the grinding and crushing of all such mighty things, the water gives no sound, therefore, O king, you may take it that there is no soul, neither being, in water.'
Very good, Nagasena! With fitting discrimination has the puzzle put to you been solved. Just, Någasena, as a gem of inestimable value which had come into the hands of an able master goldsmith, clever and well trained, would meet with due appreciation, estimation, and praise-just as a rare pearl
· Their names are given. On this belief see above, III, 7, 10 (vol. 1, p. 130) and Kullavagga IX, 1, 3.
Deså gato, based on the teaching of the Omniscient One,' says Hînati-kumbure, who therefore apparently read desanâgato.
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