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III, 4, 4.
PURGATORY.
103
Let him, with resolution, step right out. As a carter who has left the smooth high road, And turned to byways rough, broods ill at ease'(Like him who hazards all at dice, and fails) -- So the weak mind who still neglects the good, And follows after evil, grieves at heart, When fallen into the power of death, as he, The ruined gamester, in his hour of need ?."' [67] “Very good, Nâgasena!'
4. The king' said: “You (Buddhists 3) say thus : “The fire of purgatory is very much more fierce than an ordinary fire. A small stone cast into an ordinary fire may smoke for a day without being destroyed; but a rock as big as an upper chamber cast into the furnace of purgatory would be that moment destroyed.” That is a statement I cannot believe. Now, on the other hand you say thus : “Whatsoever beings are there reborn, though they
· Ghayati. It is an odd coincidence that this word, which means either to burn or to meditate, according to the root from which it is derived, can be rendered here either 'burn' or 'brood' in English. In fact it is the second, not the first, root that is here intended, as is plain from such passages as Gâtaka III, 354, where the compound pagghầyati means 'to brood over a thing.'
Quoted from the Samyutta Nikâya II, 3, 2 (p. 57 in M. Feer's edition, published by the Pâli Text Society). The readings there differ slightly from those of our text here, and the verses are put into the mouth of Khema, the god, instead of being ascribed to the Buddha. Hînati-kumburê (p. 79) agrees with M. Léon Feer in reading mando for mano in the last line; and I have followed them in my translation. There are several stanzas in the Gataka book of carters lost in the desert, but there is nothing to identify any one of them with the story referred to.
5. You' in the plural: that is, you Bhikkhus.' So also above, Pp. 30, 50.
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