The History of Buddhist Thought c23.13

c23.13

He also went to Ceylon. Here we find several legends that belong to the older schools, and they have been inserted in the sūtra so mechanically that the older teaching has been preserved. Ceylon was formerly inhabited by female rākshasas, monsters who feed on human flesh. He changed himself into the lovely form of the god of Love. The monsters asked him to be their husband, and he promised, if they would do what he ordered. So he expounded to them the Noble Eightfold Path, the ten rules of good action, and taught them the four Āgamas. Some attained the fruit of Entering the Stream, or the fruit of Once-returner, of Non-returner, some arhatship, some Pratyekabuddhahoood. This is the so-called Hīnayāna teaching as it probably stood in a sūtra used by the compiler of this work.