PSALMS OF THE BRETHREN
Canto V.
Psalms of Five Verses
CCVII
Yasadatta
Translated from the Pali by Mrs. C.A.F. Rhys Davids.
Public Domain
Reborn in this Buddha-age in a clan of Malla rājas, and named Yasadatta, he was educated at Takkasilā.[1] Thereafter making a tour with the Wanderer Sabhiya,[2] they came to Sāvatthī, where Sabhiya put questions to the Exalted One. Yasadatta listened to the answers, thinking as he took his seat, eager to criticize: 'I will show the defects in the Samana Gotama's discourse.' Now the Exalted One knew what was in his mind, and at the end of the 'Sabhiya Sutta' admonished him in these verses:
[360] Who witless and with captious mind
Doth hear the Conqueror's doctrine told,
Far, far from the true Norm is he,
As from the heaven is the earth.[3]
[361] Who witless and with captious mind
Doth hear the Conqueror's doctrine told.
From the true Norm he wanes away,
As in the month's dark half the moon.
[362] [202] Who witless, etc. ...
In the true Norm he withers up,
As fish where water runneth low.
[363] Who witless, etc. ...
In the true Norm he doth not thrive,
As rotten seed in furrow sown.
[364] He who with glad contented mind
Doth hear the Conqueror's doctrine told,
He, casting out th' Intoxicants,
Doth realize the Influctuate,[4] Doth win the Peace ineffable,
And is perfected, sane, immune.
Thus admonished by the Master, Yasadatta was filled with emotion, entered the Order, and, establishing insight, in due course won arahantship. And in confessing aññā he uttered these very verses.
[1] See Bud. Ind., pp. 8, 28, 203.
[2] See Sabhiya's psalm CLXXXVIII.; Sutta-Nipāta, iii. 6.
[3] = verse 218 (sic is: 278), a line in Sabhiya's own psalm.
[4] Akuppatā, a very rare abstract noun from akuppa, undisturbed, unshaken. 'Is perfected' (parinibbāti, more usually the deponent form parinibbāyati) in the sense of rounded off, complete - i.e., attained life's climax and end. 'Sane,' etc. = anāsavo.
