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296
FO-SHO-HING-TSAN-KING.
V, 36.
this his bequeathed precepts: (his testamentary rules). ‘After my Nirvana, 2017
'Ye ought to reverence and obey the Pratimoksha, (receive it) as your master, a shining lamp in the dark night, 2018
'Or as a great jewel (treasured by) a poor man. The injunctions I have ever given, these you ought to obey and follow carefully, and treat in no way different from myself. 2019
'Keep pure your body, words, and conduct, put from you all concerns of daily life (business), lands, houses, cattle, storing wealth or hoarding grain. 2020
'All these should be avoided as we avoid a fiery pit; (so also) sowing the land, cutting down shrubs, healing of wounds or the practice of medicine, 2021
Star-gazing and astrology, forecasting lucky or unfortunate events by signs (palm signs), prognosticating good or evil, all these are things forbidden. 2022
'Keeping the body temperate, eat at proper times; receive no mission as a go-between ; compound no philteries ; abhor dissimulation; 2023
Follow right doctrine, and be kind to all that lives; receive in moderation what is given; receive but hoard not up; these are, in brief, my spoken precepts. 2024
These form the groundwork of my rules, these also are the ground of full emancipation ? Enabled
1 These 'bequeathed precepts' form a separate tract in the Chinese Buddhist Canon; it is generally bound up with the Sätra of 42 Sections. I have translated it in my first Report on the Chinese Buddhist Books in the Library of the India Office. [This Sätra in Chinese is called 'an epitome of the Vinaya.' Is it the 'substance of the Vinaya' referred to in the Bairat Edict of Asoka ?]
* Full emancipation seems here to be a synonym of Prati
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