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THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA. III, 6, 2.
2. The king said: 'Did the Buddha, Nagasena, the omniscient one, foresee all things ?'
'Yes. The Blessed One was not only omniscient. He foresaw all things.'
‘Then why was it that he was in the habit only from time to time, and as occasion arose, of laying down rules for the members of the Order??'
'Is there any physician, O king, who knows all the medicinal drugs to be found on the earth ?' *Yes, there may be such a man.'
Well, O king, does he give his decoctions to the patient to drink at a time when illness has already set in, or before that?'
When the malady has arisen.'
Just so, great king, the Blessed One, though he was omniscient and foresaw all things, laid down no rule at an unseasonable time, but only when need arose did he establish a regulation which his disciples were not to transgress as long as they lived.'
Well answered, Nagasena!'
3. [75] The king said: 'Is it true, Nagasena, that the Buddha was endowed with the thirty-two bodily marks of a great man, and graced with the eighty subsidiary characteristics; that he was golden in colour with a skin like gold, and that there spread around him a glorious halo of a fathom's length?'
Such, O king, was the Blessed One.'
But were his parents like that?' 'No, they were not.'
'In that case you must say that he was born so. But surely a son is either like his mother, or those on
1 This is how Hinati-kumburê understands the passage.
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