Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 21.djvu/289

 end, cast it away, and then walk off to the Brahma-world 1 ,

25. Is not difficult, nor would it require a strength surpassing everybody's strength to do this work of difficulty.

26. Something more difficult than that will he do who in the last days after my extinction shall pronounce this Sfltra, were it but a single moment.

27. It will not be difficult for him to walk in the midst of the conflagration at the (time of the) end of the world, even if he carries with him a load of hay.

28. More difficult it will be to keep this Stitra after my extinction and teach it to a single creature.

29. One may keep the eighty-four thousand divisions of the law 2 and expound them, with the Brahmaloka may mean either one of the twenty Brahma heavens, or all of them collectively. There are four arupabrahmalokas, and sixteen rupabrahmalokas. Dharmaskandha, Pali Dhammakkhandha; see Burnouf, Introd. p. 34 seq. ; B. H. Hodgson, Essays, p. 14 ; Childers, Pali Dict. p. 1 17, where the following definition is given: ' The Tipi/aka is divided into eighty-four thousand dhammakkhandhas, " articles " or " sections of the Law." They are divisions according to subject. Buddhaghosa, as an illustration of the meaning of this term, says that a Sutta, or discourse, dealing with one subject forms one dh., while a Sutta embracing several subjects forms several/ It is worth while to compare this number of divisions with the eighty-four thousand monasteries erected by king Ajoka in the eighty-four (thousand) towns of India, as we know from the historical work Dfpavawsa VI, 95 seq., where we read (according to Dr.Oldenberg's transl.): 'Full and complete eighty-four thousand most precious sections of the Truth (dhammakkhandha) have been taught by the most excellent Buddha; I will build eighty-four thousand monasteries, honouring each single section of the Truth by one monastery.'