"Nor if you worthy be, nor if you pray,
Nor if it be but fair, will I give way:
[102] Here let us two to-day a battle wage;
He shall have place, whoever wins the fray."

"Known am I in all regions far and near,
Mighty, of boundless glory, without peer,
All virtues are united in my form.
Right am I: Wrong, how can you conquer here?"

"By iron gold is beaten, nor do we
Gold used for beating iron ever see:
If Wrong 'gainst Right shall win the fight to-day,
Iron as beautiful as gold will be."

"If you indeed are mighty in the fray,
Though neither good nor wise is what you say,
Swallow I will all these your evil words;
And willy nilly I will make you way."

These six stanzas they repeated, one answering the other.

[103] But at the very moment when the Bodhisatta repeated this stanza, Adhamma could no longer stand in his car, but head-foremost plunged into the earth which gaped to receive him, and was born again in nethermost hell.

The Blessed One no sooner perceived this that had happened, than in his Perfect Wisdom he recited the remaining stanzas:

The words no sooner heard, Wrong from the height
Plunged over heels head-foremost out of sight:
This was the end and direful fate of Wrong.
I had no battle, though I longed to fight.

"Thus by the Mighty-in-Forbearance lies
Conquered the Mighty Warrior Wrong, and dies
Swallowed in earth: the other, joyful, strong,
Truth-armoured, in his car away he hies.

"Who in his house no due observance pays
To parents, sages, brahmins, when he lays
The body down, and bursts its bonds asunder,
He, even from this world, goes straight to hell,
Even as Adhamma down head-foremost fell.

"Who in his house all due observance pays
To parents, sages, brahmins, when he lays
The body down, and bursts its bonds asunder,
Straight from this world, onward to heaven he hies,
As Dhamma in his chariot sought the skies."

[104] When the Master had ended this discourse, he said, "Not now only, Brethren, but in former times also, Devadatta attacked me, and was swallowed up in the earth": then he identified the Birth--"At that time Devadatta was Adhamma, and his attendants were the attendants of Devadatta, and I was Dhamma, and the Buddha's attendants were the attendants of Dhamma."

Footnotes

^64:1 Right doing, right saying, right thinking.

^65:1 Cf. Pali text, III. 29 (translation, p. 19).