been severed from my body.' The maid picked them up at once, and hid them under a bit of linen. At this moment Upagupta arrived, and he stood up before Vâsavadattâ. The courtezan, seeing him standing up before her, said to him: 'Son of my master, when my body was whole, when it was made for enjoyment, I several times sent my maid to you, and you answered me: "My sister, it is not time for you to see me." To-day, when the knife has carried off my hands and feet, my ears and nose, when I am thrown in the dirt and in blood, why do you come?' And she uttered the following verses:
"'When my body was soft like the lotus flower, when it was adorned with ornaments and rich clothes, when it had all which attracted the eye, I was so unhappy as not to see you.
"'To-day why do you come to contemplate a body, the sight of which the eyes cannot bear, which games, pleasure, joy, and beauty have abandoned, which inspires horror, and is stained with blood and dirt?'
"Upagupta answered her: 'I have not come to you, my sister, attracted by the love of pleasure; but I am come to see the real nature of the miserable objects of the enjoyments of man'" (H. B. I., p. 146 ff).
Such is the character of the more ancient portions of the
Sûtra-pitaka. It consists largely of tales, most of which have
much the same outward form, the details only being varied;
and all of which are intended to impress some kind of moral
upon their hearers. But the Sûtra collection is composed of
two different classes of works, the one class being named by
Burnouf simple Sûtras, the other developed Sûtras. The developed
Sûtras belong, according to the same authority, to a much
later period, and are marked off from the simple Sûtras by
certain well-defined characters. They are indeed of a kind
which absolutely precludes the notion that they can emanate
in any way whatever from Sâkyamuni, or that they could have
been composed during the modest beginnings of his Church,
when his followers were rather intent on practical goodness
than on pompous and high-flown descriptions of their Master's
magnificence. Not that all the Sûtras classed by Burnouf as
simple must needs belong to a very early age; but that the
developed Sûtras certainly could not have been written until
some centuries after Sâkyamuni's death, when his disciples,
