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16
THE QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES
IV, 5, 16.
away, gone to ruin, closed in, no longer passable, and lost to view. And therefore is it that he said :
"The Tathagata, O brethren, the Arahat, the Buddha supreme, is the discoverer of a way that was unknown.”'
Very good, Nagasena! That is so, and I accept it as you say.' [Here ends the dilemma as to the way of
Nirvana.]
[DILEMMA THE FORTY-FIFTH.
THE BUDDHA'S KINDNESS.] 16. Venerable Nâgasena, it was said by the Blessed One:
" Already in former births when I was a man had I acquired the habit of inflicting no hurt on living beings ?."
But on the other hand it is said 2: “When he was Lomasa Kassapa, the Rishi, he had hundreds of living creatures slain and offered the great sacrifice, the ‘Drink of Triumph 3.'"
1 This passage has not yet been traced in the Pitakas.
. The identical words are not found, but they are a summary of the Lomasa Kassapa Gâtaka (No. 433 in Prof. Fausböll's edition, and see especially vol. iii, p. 517, line 25).
3 Vâgapeyya, which Professor Fausböll (loc. cit., p. 518) spells vâ ka peyya, and a Burmese MS. he quotes spells vâdhapeyya (characteristically enough,—the scribe not understanding the word, and thinking it must have been derived from vadha, makes what he thinks must be a correction). The Sanskrit form of the word is vâ kapêya, the drink or draught of battle or victory, name of that one of the seven Soma sacrifices which a king offered when desirous of attaining to sovran overlordship. In the allied legend
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| SR No. | 007682 |
| Book Title | Questions of King Milinda Part 02 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | T W Rhys Davids |
| Publisher | Oxford |
| Publication Year | 1894 |
| Total Pages | 2240 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 38 MB |