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 82

52
THE QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES
IV, 6, 11.
greater weight and importance, and more worthy of gifts than even the jewel treasure of the Order, that the Tathagata should have told his aunt, when about to present him with a wrapper for the rainy season which she herself had carded and pressed and beaten and cut and woven ?, to give it to the Order ! If, Nagasena, the Tathagata were really higher and greater and more excellent than the Order, then he would have known that a gift given to him would be most meritorious, and therefore would not have told her to give it to the Order. But inasmuch as the Tathagata, Nagasena, puts himself not in the way of gifts to himself, gives no occasion for such gifts, you see that he then told his aunt to give that wrapper rather to the Order.'
11. 'The quotation you make, O king, is correct, and the Blessed One did so direct his aunt's gifts. But that was not because an act of reverence paid to himself would bear no fruit, or because he was unworthy to receive gifts, but it was out of kindness and mercy that he, thinking: “Thus will the Order in times to come, when I am gone, be highly thought of;" magnified the excellence which the Order really had, in that he said: “Give it, O Gotami, to the Order. If you present the Order with it, thus will you have paid homage alike to the Order and to me.” Just as a father, O king, while he is yet alive, exalts in the midst of the assembly of ministers, soldiers, and royal messengers, of
1 The translation of these five technical terms of cloth-making is doubtful. The Simhalese (p. 335) has piñgana, sindina, pothita, kalina, wiyana.
· The Simhalese (p. 335) here gives at length the story of Pagapati's gift, at the time when Gotama returned, as the Buddha, to Kapilavatthu.
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