z:\ ambedkar\vol 011\vol11 06.indd MK SJ+YS 5 10 2013/YS 18 11 2013 428
428 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
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Vulture’s Peak came to the Peacock’s Feeding-Ground on the bank of the Sumagadba and there walked to and fro in the open air. Then Nigrodha saw him thus walking, and on seeing him he called his company to order, saying: “Be still, sirs, and make no noise. The Samana Gotama is by the bank of the Sumagadha.” When he had said this the wanderers kept silence.
Then the Exalted One went up to Nigrodha the wanderer, and Nigrodha spake thus to him: “Let the Lord, the Exalted One, approach. Welcome is the Lord, the Exalted One! Long has the Lord, the Exalted One, taken ere deciding on this step of coming hither. May it please the Lord, the Exalted One, to take a seat. Here is one ready.”
The Exalted One sat down on the seat made ready, and Nigrodha, taking a low seat, sat beside him.
Thereupon Nigrodha said to the Exalted One: “As the Samana Gotama has come to our assembly, we would like to ask him this question: ‘What, Lord, is this religion of the Exalted One, wherein he trains his disciples, and which those disciples, so trained by the Exalted One as to win comfort, acknowledge to be their utmost support and the fundamental principles of righteousness ?’ ”
“Difficult is it, Nigrodha, for one of another view, of another persuasion, of another confession, without practice and without teaching, to understand that wherein I train my disciples, and which they, so trained as to win comfort, acknowledge to be their utmost support and the fundamental principle of righteousness.
“But ask me, Nigrodha, a question about your own doctrine, about austere scrupulousness of life: in what does the fulfilment, in what does the non-fulfilment of these self-mortifications consist?”
Then Nigrodha spake thus to the Exalted One: “We, Lord, profess self-mortifying austerities; we hold them to be essential; we cleave to them. In what does the fulfilment, in what does the non-fulfilment of them consist ?”
“Suppose, Nigrodha, that an ascetic goes