CANTO XIV
PSALM OF ABOUT THIRTY VERSES

LXXI
Subhā of Jīvaka's Mango-grove. ³⁸⁸

SHE too, having made her resolve under former Buddhas, and heaping up good of age-enduring efficacy in this and that rebirth, fostering the root of good and perfecting the conditions for emancipation through the ripening of her knowledge, was in this Buddha-era reborn at Rājagaha, in the family of a very eminent brahmin. Her name was Subhā, and truly lovely was her body in all its members. It was for this reason that she came to be so called. While the Master sojourned at Rājagaha, she received faith and became a lay-disciple. Later she grew anxious over the round of life, and saw the bane of the pleasures of sense, and discerned that safety lay in renunciation. She entered the Order under the Great Pajāpatī the Gotamid, and exercising herself in insight, was soon established in the fruition of the Path of No-return.

Now one day a certain libertine of Rājagaha, in the prime of youth, was standing in the Jīvaka Mango-grove, and saw her going to siesta; and feeling enamoured, he barred her way, soliciting her to sensual pleasures. She declared to him by many instances the bane of sensuous pleasures and her own choice of renunciation, teaching him the Norm. Even then he was not cured, but persisted. The Therī, not stopping short at her own words, and seeing his passion for the beauty of her eyes, extracted one of them, and handed it to him, saying: 'Come, then! here is the offending eye of her!' Thereat the man was horrified and appalled and, his lust all gone, asked her forgiveness. The Therī went to the Master's presence, and there, at sight of Him, her eye became as it was before. Thereat she stood vibrating with unceasing joy at the Buddha. The Master, knowing the state of her mind, taught her, and showed her exercise for reaching the highest. Repressing her joy, she developed insight, and attained Arahantship, together with thorough grasp of the Norm in form and meaning. Thereafter, abiding in the bliss and fruition of Nibbana, she, reflecting on what she had won, uttered her dialogue with the libertine in these verses:

'Sweet overhead is the sough of the blossoming crests of the forest
Swayed by the wind-gods.
To face p. 150.

³⁸⁸ Jīvakā Komārabhacca, physician to King Bimbisāra at the court of Rājagaha, is a very prominent layman in the first chronicles of the Order, prescribing for its members on different occasions. See Vinaya Texts (S.B.E.), i. 191, ii. 173 ſſ., iii. 102; Majjh. Nik., i. 368 ſſ.; Dīgha Nik., i. 49 (Dialogues, i. 67), in which the Grove is mentioned.

³⁸⁹ The metre now changes from śloka to that termed vetālīya, or, at least, to a metre which in later literature became formulated under that name. It runs approximately thus ('What have I,' etc.):

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³⁹⁰ 'Although,' remarks the Commentator, 'in that wood there was then nothing of the sort. But this he said, wishing to make her afraid.'

³⁹¹ Lit., 'Come, dwell in a house.'

³⁹² The mythical central mountain of the universe, called also Sineru.

³⁹³ Suṇṇa, for the earnest Buddhist, connoting both solitude and the ejection of the Ego-delusion. Cf. Ps. xxxi. 46.

³⁹⁴ I have filled up the somewhat elliptical style of the text from the Commentary.

³⁹⁵ Cf. Balzac's philosophe: 'Tiens,' dit-il, en voyant les pleurs de sa femme, 'j'ai décomposé les larmes. Elles contiennent un peu de phosphate, de chaux, de chlorure de sodium, du mucus et de l'eau.' –La Recherche de l'Absolu.