A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s3.t2.100

v2.c19.s3.t2.100

6, 7. The two short works, Vimānavatthu and Petavatthu,⁴ the "Stories of the Divine Palaces" and the "Ghost Stories," probably belong to the latest stratum of literature assembled in the Pāli-Canon. The truly great and profound doctrine of Karman, which has found expression in Brahmanical as well as Buddhist texts in so many beautiful sayings and legends,⁵ is most clumsily explained by means of examples in these little stories, whose metrical form is their only poetical attribute. The stories, no doubt chiefly intended for laymen, are all made after one model. In the Vimānavatthu some divine being or other is asked by Moggallāna how he has gained possession of this or the other divine palace (vimāna) with all its splendours.[^1) In reply the deity briefly recounts the good action which he had performed in one of his former existences, in consequence of which he gained this heavenly joy. In the Petavatthu a Peta (Sanskrit Preta, spirit of a dead person, which, restless and tormented, roams about in the neighbourhood of the earth as a ghost) appears, and is asked by Nārada, and sometimes by another person also, what action has brought about his unhappy lot, whereupon he relates it in a few brief words. One example (Petavatthu I, 2) will suffice: