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34
THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA.
I, 40.
'Is there, my good men, any other learned brother to discuss things with me and dispel my doubts ?'
40. Now at that time the venerable Nâgasena, after making his alms-tour through the villages, towns, and cities, had in due course arrived at Sâgala, attended by a band of Samanas, as the leader of a company of the Order; the head of a body of disciples; the teacher of a school; famous and renowned, and highly esteemed by the people. And he was learned, clever, wise, sagacious, and able; a skilful expounder, of subdued manners, but full of courage; well versed in tradition, master of the three Baskets (Pitakas), and erudite in Vedic lore! He was in possession of the highest (Buddhist) insight, a master of all that had been handed down in the schools, and of the various discriminations by which the most abstruse points can be explained. He knew by heart the ninefold divisions of the doctrine of the Buddha to perfection, and was equally skilled in discerning both the spirit and the letter of the Word. Endowed with instantaneous and varied power of repartee, and wealth of language, and beauty of eloquence, he was difficult to equal, and still more difficult to excel, difficult to answer, to repel, or to refute. He was imperturbable as the depths of the sea, immovable as the king of mountains; victorious in the struggle with evil, a dispeller
1 This is always explained as wise in the Buddhist Vedas, that is, the three Pirakas.
2 Padisambhidas: see above, the note on p. 29.
: Pârami-ppatto. This is an unusual use of Parami, but it occurs again below, p. 36, in a similar connection, and there can be no doubt of its meaning. Trenckner translates it better than any one else.'
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