Lalit Vistara

Author(s): Rajendralala Mitra
Publisher: Asiatic Society

Page 15

CHAPTER 1.
of the element (Bhúmi) of that state. The commentator of the Riksha-bhagavati enumerates ten Bhimis, appropriate to the priesthood, the last being Buddha Bhimi.*
20. Fourfold congregation,--. ., eeclesiastics of all the four difforønt orders: " Ist, those who accomplish justice, that is the Buddbas, tho Lokajyestlas, (honorables of the ng .) tho Builhisattvas, the l'ratyoka Buddhis, the Yrávakus, &c., whose virtue transcendo the low itself, and who surmounting every obstacle pecomplish their own deliveranco (Mukti). 2nd, The ordinary Sirnyhes of the age that is, men who live their cards and beada, and dress themselves with the kinshi (a kind of eap woru loy Buddhist pricats), who cubraco monastic life and its obligations, and olevo the precepto and the prohibitions of Buddha Brl, The dumb sherp Sanghus, (Fa yang seng, Chinese,) those vull and sampil characters who are unable to comprehend the cistiction betwixt the cluinixeion and the non-comunission of the fundamental xins, (murder, theft, fornication, lying,) and who, wheu guilty of cruis of les enormity, make no sbow of replaner 1 unil last, The xhamcl:88 Sang. Irs, who, having embraced nonartio lisos, inscrupulously jufringo the precepts and opky njoined upon them, and, devoid of all shamo aud chastity: a indifferent eren to the butur fruits of their wickedness in to come."
21. Arhat, --Nom. Nm. Arhan : (.1lohen. C'hinean, Nosirta, Tib).) "The Arhat or Vlorable," says M. Burnoul, "has, with relation to knowledge, reached the most ekvato rank anong sagor, and the Sutras, as well on the trailáne, attribute to lin supernatura! faculties, that in to this sive Abhij nánus or superior facultios, namely, the power of it-sun ny for one desires; the faculty of bearing sounds lower forlile they may 10; the power of knowing the thoughts of others, and the anterior existences of anima ted nature ; and lastly the power poeing objects at a great distance. The noto of M. Remusat, quoted above, (Fou Kou Kie, p. 96.) teaches us that an Arhat has to traverso twenty thousand Kalpas
Sannkrita M8, No. 813, Libry. Ac. Hoc. f. 42. My Sanskrit Buddhist Literuture of Nepal, p. 81. + Fu Hian's Algrimage, p. 8.
Huf du Buddhisme, p. 294.