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IV, 7, 6.
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6. For recitation is of great good, O king, and asking questions, and superintending building work, and seeing to gifts and offerings is of great goodeach of them to one or other of the spiritual objects which the brethren seek to obtain. Just, O king, as there might be some one of the ministers or soldiers or messengers or sentries or body-guards or attendants who was especially serviceable and useful to the king, but when he had any business given him to do they would all help him—just so are all these things of assistance when those objects have to be attained. When all men, O king, shall have become by nature pure, then will there be nothing left for a teacher 1 to accomplish. But so long as there is still need of discipleship, so long will even such a man, O king, as the Elder Sâriputta himself (though he had attained to the summit of wisdom by reason of his having been, through countless ages, deeply rooted in merit), yet find it impossible, without discipleship, to attain to Arahatship. Therefore is it, O king, that hearing (the Scriptures) is of use, and recitation of them, and asking questions about them. And therefore is it that those also who are addicted to
OF MILINDA THE KING.
1 'Who is a Buddha' adds Hînafi-kumburê (p. 372). Savanena, literally 'bearing.'
Asavakkhayam, literally 'to the destruction of the Asavas;' that is, of the Great Evils, which are lust, dulness, becoming, and ignorance. Mr. Trenckner marks this passage as corrupt, but Hînafi-kumburê seems to have had the same reading before him as Mr. Trenckner has selected from his MSS., except that he has not had any mark of punctuation after the word hoti.
The particular occasion on which Sâriputta became finally free from the Asavas is related in the Dîgha-nakha Suttanta, No. 74 in the Magghima Nikâya (vol. i, p. 50 of Mr. Trenckner's edition for the Pâli Text Society).
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