Questions of King Milinda Part 02

SR No.: 007682
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1894
Total Pages: 2240
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 38 MB

Page 102

72
THE QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES
IV. 6, 35.
fellows renounce the world according to the doctrine of the Conquerors, then they, unable to grasp the exquisitely fine and subtle distinctions of the Four Truths, missing them, going beyond them, turn back before long to the lower state. And why so ? Because it is so difficult to penetrate into the finenesses and subtleties of the Truths. This is how they show forth the difficulty of its realisation.
35. 'And how do they show how many are the restraints to be observed within it? Just, О king, as a man who had gone to a place where a mighty battle was going on, when, surrounded on all sides by the forces of the enemy, he sees the armed hosts crowding in upon him, will give way, turn back, and take to flight. And why so ? Out of fear lest he should not be saved in the midst of so hot a fight. Just so, O king, when whosoever are wicked!, unrestrained, shameless, foolish, full of illwill, fickle, unsteady, mean and stupid, renounce the world under the system of the Conquerors, then they, unable to carry out the manifold precepts, give way, turn back, and take to flight, and so before long return to the lower state. And why so ? Because of the multiform nature of the restraints to be observed in the religion of the Conquerors. Thus is it, o king, that they show forth the manifoldness of the restraints to be observed.
as a sheep,' which would be a quite satisfactory basis for the secondary sense of ‘imbecile,' in which alone it can be traced in Pâli. For the Sanskrit form edamûka Böhtlingk-Roth give only lexicographers as authority. So ela, saliva,' is in Pali only a lexicographer's word, and may have been invented to explain elam ûga, and anelagala vâkâ, as at Sumangala, p. 282.
Pakata. Hînali-kumburê says (p. 356) pâpakalâ wû, which suggests a different reading.
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