________________
596
discuss their mutual faith and Garahadinna wanted to attract the other to his side. He would say, the Niganthas were all-knowing and all-seeing, etc. So one day Sirigutta invited 500 nigantha monks to his house to test their omniscience. He had a deep ditch dug in his house which he covered with a deceptive net. Cushions were placed on the net. As the monks came and occupied the seats, they slipped down into the ditch.
This shocked his friend Garahadinna who was bent on taking revenge. After some time, he invited Buddha and his monks to his house and adopted the same device to trap them. But Buddha could foresee it. By dint of his spiritual power, he filled up the ditch with lotuses in full bloom so that he and his followers could comfortably take their seats. Then Buddha delivered his sermon which purified the two friends and many others.
Source: Dhammapada Aṭṭhakatha,
4-12.
Comment
This sort of partisan and sectarian stories were galore in both the Buddhist and Jaina traditions. In the Jaina tradition, there is the famous story of King Bimbisara of Magadha and his consort Chelana. The former was a follower of Buddha and the latter of the Niganthas. Once the Buddhist monks were invited to the palace. Chelna had their slippers collected, cut into fine pieces, boiled in butter milk and served to the monks who swallowed it with the greatest relish. To take revenge, the king one day saw a nigantha monk in a temple settled in deep meditation. The king arranged to get a harlot and deposited her near the monk. Next morning, words went round that a nigantha monk spent the night with a prostitute. People flocked in largest number. Even the king and the queen came. But all saw to their surprise that a monk was there alright, but he was a Buddhist monk. It seems that it was age when a race was going on for fabricating such stories to glorify one's own religion.
Even the Questions of Milinda
(P350) has an exaggerated account of 84000 people having been purified by Buddha's sermons in course of one day.
