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IV, 4, 41.
DEVADATTA.
291
41. 'All the many things which you, great king, have now propounded, are so, and not otherwise.'
“Then, Nagasena, unless black and white are the same in kind, it follows that good and evil bear equal fruit.'
Nay, not so, great king! Good and evil have not the same result. Devadatta was opposed by everybody. No one was hostile to the Bodisat. And the hostility which Devadatta felt towards the Bodisat, that came to maturity and bore fruit in each successive birth. And so also as Devadatta, when he was established in lordship over the world, [204] was a protection to the poor, put up bridges and courts of justice and rest-houses for the people, and gave gifts according to his bent to Samanas and Brahmans, to the poor and needy and the wayfarers, it was by the result of that conduct that, from existence to existence, he came into the enjoyment of so much prosperity. For of whom, o king, can it be said that without generosity and selfrestraint, without self-control and the observance of the Upasatha ', he can reach prosperity ?
And when, O king, you say that Devadatta and the Bodisat accompanied one another in the passage from birth to birth, that meeting together of theirs took place not only at the end of a hundred, or a thousand, or a hundred thousand births, but was in fact constantly and frequently taking place through an immeasurable period of time? For you should regard that matter in the light of the comparison drawn by the Blessed One between the case of the
The Buddhist Sabbath, on which see my 'Manual of Buddhism,' pp. 139–141. : So also above, IV, 2, 64, and IV, 3, 28.
U 2
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