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234
THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA.
IV, 3, 5.
[THE HARM OF PREACHING.] 5. “Venerable Nâgasena, you Bhikkhus say that the Tathâgata averts harm from all beings, and does them good. And again you say that when he was preaching the discourse based on the simile of the burning fire ? hot blood was ejected from the mouths of about sixty Bhikkhus. By his delivery of that discourse he did those Bhikkhus harm and not good. So if the first statement is correct, the second is false; and if the second is correct, the first (165) is false. This too is a double-pointed problem put to you, which you have to solve.'
6. ‘Both are true. What happened to them was not the Tathagata's doing, but their own.'
* But, Nagasena, if the Tathagata had not delivered that discourse, then would they have vomited up hot blood ?'
No. When they took wrongly what he said, then was there a burning kindled within them, and hot blood was ejected from their mouths.'
Then that must have happened, Nagasena, through the act of the Tathagata, it must have been the Tathagata who was the chief cause to destroy them. Suppose a serpent, Nâgasena, had crept into an anthill, and a man in want of earth were to break into the anthill, and take the earth of it away. And by his doing so the entrance-hole to the anthill
"I cannot give chapter and verse for the words, but the sentiment is common enough.
* This is not the Âditta-pariyâya given in the Mahavagga I, 21, and the Aggikk handâpama Sutta in the 7th Book of the Anguttara.
Adhikâra. Pradhana is the Simhalese translation.
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