Questions of King Milinda Part 02

SR No.: 007682
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

Page 48

18
THE QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES
IV, 5, 18.
66
'Not the whole world, Sayha, the ocean girt, With all the seas and hills that girdle it, Would I, desire to have, along with shame1."
'But though, O king, the Bodisat had said that, yet at the very sight of Kandavati (Moon-face), the princess, he went out of his mind and lost command of himself through love. And it was when thus out of his mind, confused and agitated, that he, with his thoughts all perplexed, scattered and wandering, thus offered the great sacrifice, the "Drink of Triumph,"-and mighty was the outpour of blood from the necks of the slaughtered beasts!
'Just, O king, as a madman, when out of his senses, will step into a fiery furnace, and take hold of an infuriated venomous snake, and go up to a rogue elephant, and plunge forwards into great waters, the further shore of which he cannot see, and trample through dirty pools and muddy places 3, and rush into thorny brakes, and fall down precipices, and feed himself on filth, and go naked through the streets, and do many other things improper to be donejust so was it, O king, that at the very sight of Kandavati, the princess, the Bodisat went out of his mind, and then only acted as I have said.
18. [221] Now an evil act done, O king, by one out of his mind, is even in this present world not considered as a grievous offence, nor is it so in
1 This verse is found not only in the 433rd Gâtaka (loc. cit.), but also in the Sayha Gâtaka, No. 310, a shorter recension of the same story.
• Hînafi-kumburê here summarises the whole story.
Kandanika and oligalla. See Anguttara III, 57, 1; Magghima I, 11, 448; Thera Gâthâ 567; Kullavagga V, 17, 1. Hîna/ikumburê spells the second word with an ordinary 1.
The text repeats the last paragraph.
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