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292
THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA.
IV, 4, 41.
purblind tortoise and the attainment of the condition of a human being. And it was not only with Devadatta that such union took place. Sâriputta the Elder also, O king, was through thousands of births the father, or the grandfather, or the uncle', or the brother, or the son, or the nephew, or the friend of the Bodisat; and the Bodisat was the father, or the grandfather, or the uncle, or the brother, or the son, or the nephew, or the friend of Sariputta the Elder.
'All beings in fact, O king, who, in various forms as creatures, are carried down the stream of transmigration, meet, as they are whirled along in it, both with pleasant companions and with disagreeable ones—just as water whirled along in a stream meets with pure and impure substances, with the beautiful and with the ugly.
And when, O king, Devadatta as the god, had been himself Unrighteous, and had led others into unrighteousness of life, he was burnt in purgatory for an immeasurable period of time [205] But the Bodisat, who, as the god, had been himself Righteous, and had led others into righteousness of life, lived in all the bliss of heaven for a like immeasurable period of time. And whilst in this life, Devadatta, who had plotted injury against the Buddha, and had created a schism in the Order, was swallowed up by the earth, the Tathagata,
That is father's younger brother.' The Pâli has no word for uncle generally, the whole scheme of relationship being different from ours, and the various sorts of uncles having, in the Pâli scheme, different and distinct names.
• Fifty-seven kotis and sixty hundreds of thousands of years,' says the text, with touching accuracy.
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