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I, 36.
NÂGASENA GAINS NIRVÂNA.
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ma-rakkhita addressed him, and said : Just, Nâgasena, as a herdsman tends the cows, but others enjoy their produce, so thou too carriest in thy head the whole three baskets of the Buddha's word, and still art not yet a partaker of the fruit of Samanaship.'
'Though that be so, holy one, say no more,' was the reply. And on that very day, at night, he attained to Arahatship and with it to the fourfold power of that Wisdom possessed by all Arahats (that is to say: the realisation of the sense, and the appreciation of the deep religious teaching contained in the word, the power of intuitive judgment, and the power of correct and ready exposition)?. And at the moment of his penetrating the truth all the gods shouted their approval, and the earth thundered, and the Brahma gods clapped their hands, and there fell from heaven a shower of sweet-scented sandal dust and of Mandarava flowers.
36. Now at that time the innumerable company of the Arahats at the Guarded Slope in the Himalaya mountains sent a message to him to come, for they were anxious to see him. And when he heard the message the venerable Nâgasena vanished from the Asoka Park and appeared before them. And they said : Nâgasena, that king Milinda is in the habit of harassing the brethren by knotty questions and by argumentations this way and that. Do thou, Nagasena, go and [19] master him.'
Not only let king Milinda, holy ones, but let all the kings of India, come and propound questions to
The four Patisam bhidâ s, which form the subject of one of the books of the Sutta Pitaka.
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