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THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA.
II, 3, 11.
11. “What is the distinguishing characteristic, Nagasena, of idea (Sañña)?'
' Recognition, o king? And what does he recognise ?-blueness and yellowness and redness and whiteness and brownness.'
Give me an illustration.'
It is like the king's treasurer, o king, who when he sees, on entering the treasure, objects the property of the king of all those colours, recognises (that they have such). Thus it is, great king, that recognition is the mark of idea.'
* Very good, Nagasena!'
What is the distinguishing characteristic, Nâgasena, of the conceived purpose (Ketana) ?"
* The being conceived, O king, and the being prepared ?'
Give me an illustration.'
It is like the case of a man, O king, who should prepare poison, and both drink of it himself, and give of it to others to drink. He himself would suffer pain, and so would they. In the same way some individual, having thought out with intention
some evil deed, on the dissolution of the body after · death, would be reborn into some unhappy state of woe in purgatory, and so also would those who followed his advice.—And it is like the case of a
* So also Buddhaghosa, Sumangala, p. 63.
Buddhaghosa, loc. cit., gives no mark of Ketana, but he gives both it and the being prepared' as the marks of the Confections. It is not clear from the Milinda alone how to render the term Ketana, but I follow Anguttara III, 77 (where it is placed on a level with aspiration), and Dhamma Samgani 5 (where it is said to be born of the contact of mind, perception, and exertion).
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