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IV, 3, 23.
THE BUDDHA'S LAST ILLNESS.
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heavy rain falls, it will become a mighty river with a great rush of water-or as when the body is of its ordinary girth, if more food be eaten, it becomes broader than before. So this was not, O king, the fault of the food that was presented, and you can not impute any harm to it.'
23. 'But, venerable Nagasena, why is it that those two gifts of food are so specially meritorious ?'
'Because of the attainment of the exalted conditions which resulted from them?'
Of what conditions, Nagasena, are you speaking?'
Of the attainment of the nine successive states which were passed through at first in one order, and then in the reverse order??
'It was on two days, was it not, Nagasena, that the Tathagata attained to those conditions in the highest degree?'
Yes, O kings'
It is a most wonderful thing, Nagasena, and a most strange, that of all the great and glorious gifts which were bestowed upon our Blessed One not one can be compared with these two almsgivings. Most marvellous is it, that even as those
Dhammânumaggana-samâ patti-varena: which the Simhalese merely repeats. For Anumagganâ see the text above, p. 62, and Sumangala Vilásinî, p. 65.
. See the full description in the Book of the Great Decease, VI, 11-13. ('Buddhist Suttas,' pp. 115, 116.) The Simhalese is here greatly expanded (pp. 230-233).
So our author must have thought that the nine Anupubbavihâras occurred also after the alms given to Gotama before he sat under the Bo Tree, but I know of no passage in the Pitakas which would support this belief. Compare the note 2 in vol. i, p. 74 of the Vinaya Texts,' and the passages there quoted.
• Buddha-khette dânam, gifts which had the Buddha as the field in which they were bestowed, or sown.'
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