Chapter XXI, Section 1a

p. 70 CHAPTER XXI. MISCELLANEOUS. 290. If by leaving a small pleasure one sees a great pleasure, let a wise man leave the small pleasure, and look to the great. 291. He who, by causing pain to others, wishes to obtain pleasure for himself, he, entangled in the bonds of hatred, will never be free from hatred. 292. What ought to be done is neglected, what ought not to be done is done; the desires of unruly, thoughtless people are always increasing. 293. But they whose whole watchfulness is always directed to their body, who do not follow what ought not to be done, and who steadfastly do what ought to be done, the desires of such watchful and wise people will come to an end. 294. A true Brâhma n a goes scatheless, though he have killed father and mother, and two valiant kings, though he has destroyed a kingdom with all its subjects. 295. A true Brâhma n a goes scatheless, though he have killed father and mother, and two holy kings, and an eminent man besides. [292. Cf. Beal, Catena, p. 264. 294, 295. These two verses are either meant to show that a truly holy man who, by accident, commits all these crimes is guiltless, or they refer to some particular event in Buddha's history. The commentator is so startled that he explains them allegorically. Mr. D'Alwis is very indignant that I should have supposed Buddha capable of pardoning patricide. 'Can it be believed,' he writes, 'that a Teacher, who held life, even the life of the minutest insect, nay, even a living tree, in such high estimation as to prevent its wanton destruction, has declared that the murder of a Brâhma n a, to whom he accorded reverence, along with his own Sangha, was blameless?' D'Alwis, Nirvâ n a, p. 88. Though something might be said in reply, considering the antecedents of king A g âta s atru, the patron of Buddha, and stories such as that quoted by the commentator on the Dhammapada (Beal, l.c. p. 150), or in Der Weise und der Thor, p. 306, still these two verses are startling, and I am not aware that Buddha has himself drawn the conclusion, which has been drawn by others, viz. that those who have reached the highest Sambodhi, and are in fact no longer themselves, are outside the domain of good and bad, and beyond the reach of guilt. Verses like 39 and 412 admit of a different explanation. Still our verses being miscellaneous extracts, might possibly have been taken from a work in which such an opinion was advanced, and I find that Mr. Childers, no mean admirer of Buddha, was not shocked by my explanation. 'In my judgment,' he says, 'this verse is intended to express in a forcible manner the Buddhist doctrine that the Arhat cannot commit a serious sin.' However, we have met before wilh far-fetched puns in these verses, and it is not impossible that the native commentators were right after all in seeing some puns or riddles in this verse. D'Alwis, following the commentary, explains mother as lust, father as pride, the two valiant klngs as heretical systems, and the realm as sensual pleasure, while veyyaggha is taken by him for a place infested wilh the tigers of obstruction against final beatitude. Some confirmation of this interpretation is supplied by a passage in the third book of the La n kâvatâra-sûtra, as quoted by Mr.