PSALMS OF THE BRETHREN
Canto I.
Psalms of Single Verses
CXVIII
Kimbila
Translated from the Pali by Mrs. C.A.F. Rhys Davids.
Public Domain
Reborn in this Buddha-age at Kapilavatthu in the family of a Sākiyan rāja, and named Kimbila,[1] he inherited immense wealth. The Master saw the maturity of his insight while staying at Anupiyā, and in order to arouse him, conjured up a beautiful woman in her prime, and showed her to him passing to old age. Then Kimbila greatly shaken uttered this verse:
[118] As bidden by some power age o'er her falls.
Her shape is as another, yet the same.
Now this my self, who ne'er have left myself,
Seems other than the self I recollect.
He thus, considering the fact of impermanence, was yet more strongly agitated, and going to the Master heard the Norm, believed, entered the Order, and in due course won arahantship. Thereupon he emphasized how he had formerly looked on things as permanent by repeating the verse, thereby confessing aññā.
[1] Also spelt (Br.) Kimila and Kimmila. He was converted, with five other young Sākiyan nobles, in the first week of the Buddha's mission, according to the Vinaya narrative. There the method adopted for his conversion is not given. Kimbila is represented in the Majjhima as maintaining his early friendship with the senior Thera Anuruddha. dwelling with him, and a third, Nandiya (Ps. XXV ), now in this wood or park, now in that (Vinaya Texts, ii. 309, iii. 228; Majjh., i. 205, iii. 155; see also CXXXVIII.). Anupiyā was a town in the Malla republic (Vinaya Texts, iii. 224).
