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THE QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES
IV, 8, 42.
another, with burning and tortured limbs, for many hundreds of thousands of years, will himself too, either as youth or man or old man, be burnt to death. And that will be to him a death at the appointed time. Whosoever has put others to death by drowning, he having suffered many hundreds of thousands of years as a being disabled, ruined, broken, weak in limb, and anxious in heart, will himself too, either as youth or man or old man, die by drowning. And that will be to him a death at the appointed time. Whosoever has put others to death by the sword, [304] he having suffered for many hundreds of thousands of years (in repeated births as an animal) from cuts and wounds and blows and bruises, or (when born as a man) ever destroyed by weapons ', will himself too, either as youth or man or old man, perish by the sword. And that will be to him a death at the appointed time.
42. Venerable Nâgasena, the death out of due time that you also speak of—come now, tell me the reason for that.'
*As a great and mighty fire, O king, on to which dry grass and sticks and branches and leaves have been heaped, will nevertheless, when this its food has been consumed, die out by the exhaustion of the fuel. Yet such a fire is said to have gone out in fullness of time, without any calamity or accident (having happened to it). Just so, O king, the man who, when he has lived many thousands of days, when he is old and stricken in years, dies at last of
· Sarnâhato. Compare above, pp. 181, 254 of the Pâli, and Magghima Nikâya I, 337.
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