Jain Journal 1997 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 29

JAIN JOURNAL: Vol-XXXI, No. 4 April 1997
The terms raising and lowering (ukkams'āvakamsa) he uses as synonyms of 'increase' and decrease.'
126
Finally cliching this theory of his by a simile, he adds the words just as (seyyathāpi nāma) and so forth. In that simile, by the expression a ball of string (sutta-gula) he means 'a ball of string which is fully wound up'; and by the expression it opens out just so far as it can be unwound (nibbethiyamānam eva phaleti) he means that a ball of string which is thrown from a mount or from the top of a tree goes on unwinding just so far as the length of the string allows; when the string is run out, it stops there and goes no further. Even so, he means to show, can a fool not go beyond the time above stated.24
From the same work, II, 3, pp. 143, 144.
Then another began to speak, thinking within himself that he would now relate the story of his particular confidant. Hence it is said another then also (aññataro pi kho) and so forth, all which is to be understood exactly as before explained.
Now here by the word Makkhali is meant that was his name, and by the word Gosāla, that that was his second name (given to him) on account of his having been born in a cow-shed. Regarding him, it is said that (seeing him) walking on a muddy piece of ground, with an oil-pot in his hand, the owner of it said to him: "My dear man, take care lest you stumble !" He, from carelessness, having stumbled and fallen, began to flee away through fear of the owner. The owner, having run up, caught the edge of his garment. He letting go his cloth, fled away naked. The rest is the same as in the case of Purana.25
24. This simile, and the doctrine it illustrates, will also be found in the corresponding passage in Rokhill (Life of the Buddha, p. 104).
25. The account of Purana is given in the preceding sections of the work, II,
2, pp. 142, 143. The same story of Gosala will be found in Spence Hardy's Manual of Buddhism, p. 301. He is there said to have been the son of a slave of the owner of the cow-shed in which he was born; and it was the same owner of the cow-shed that he run away from. He is then said to have fled to a village, the people of which received him kindly and offered him clothes; but he refused to put them on, hoping thus to be respected as a 'holy man' or arhat.
[Reprinted from Hoernle's edition of the Uväsagadasão, Calcutta, 1888]editor.