Hinduism and Buddhism: An Historical Sketch v1.c19.108

v1.c19.108

Though many suttas are little more than an exposition of some doctrine arranged in mnemonic form, others show eloquence and dramatic skill. Thus the Sāmaññaphala-sutta opens with a vivid description of the visit paid one night by Ajātasattu to the Buddha¹. We see the royal procession of elephants and share the alarm of the suspicious king at the unearthly stillness of the monastery park, until he saw the Buddha sitting in a lighted pavilion surrounded by an assembly of twelve hundred and fifty brethren, calm and silent as a clear lake. The king’s long account of his fruitless quest for truth would be tiresome if it were not of such great historic interest and the same may be said of the Buddha’s enumeration of superstitious and reprehensible practices, but from this point onwards his discourse is a magnificent crescendo of thought and language, never halting and illustrated by metaphors of great effect and beauty. Equally forcible and surely resting on some tradition of the Buddha’s own words is the solemn fervour which often marks the suttas of the Majjhima such as the descriptions of his struggle for truth, the admonitions to Rāhula and the reproof administered to Sāti.