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INTRODUCTION.
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hension of the truth. There is no statement of the kind in the Pitaka account of this event (see my translation in 'Buddhist Suttas,' pp. 146-155). But it is not inconsistent with the Pali, and is doubtless added from some edifying commentary.
There is a difference of reading between the lines put into Sariputta's mouth, at II, 2, 4, and those ascribed to Sâriputta in the Thera Gâthà (1002, 1003). If the Milinda reading is not found in some hitherto unpublished passage, we have here a real case of divergence.
Perhaps the most important apparent variation between our author and the Pitaka texts is the statement put by him, in IV, 4, 9, into the mouth of the Buddha, that a deliberate lie is one of the offences called Pârâgika, that is, involving exclusion from the Order. Now in the old Canon Law there are only four Pârâgika offences-breach of chastity, theft, murder, and a false claim to extraordinary spiritual powers (see my translation in vol. I, pp. 1-5 of the 'Vinaya Texts '); and falsehood is placed quite distinctly under another category, that of the Påkittiyas, offences requiring repentance (see p. 32 of the same translation). If our author was a member of the Order, as he almost certainly was, it would seem almost incredible that he should make an error in a matter of such common knowledge, and of such vital importance, as the number and nature of the Pârâgikas. And indeed, in the immediate context, he refers to the Påkittiya rule, though not in the exact words used in the text of the Pâtimokkha. I think that he must have known very well what he was talking about. And that a passage, not yet traced, will be found in the unpublished parts of the Pitakas, in which the Buddha is made to say that falsehood is a Pårågika-just as a Christian might maintain that falsehood is forbidden in the Ten Commandments, and yet be perfectly aware of the exact phraseology of the Ten Words.
In IV, 4, 26, our author identifies the learned pig in the Takkha-sukara Gataka with the Bodisat. He differs here from the Gâtaka Commentary, in which the Bodisat is identified with the tree-god, who acts as a kind of Greek chorus in the story. And the summaries in IV, 4, 28 of
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