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3.4.3. Five senses

Mil 3.4.3

Maple leaves and moss beside an old tree trunk.

PTS cs 1 PTS vp Pali 65 The king said: ‘Are the five Āyatanas, Nāgasena, (eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body,) produced by various actions, or by one action?’ (that is, the result of various Karmas, or of one Karma.)

‘By various actions, not by one.’

‘Give me an illustration.’

‘Now, what do you think, O king? If I were to sow in one field five kinds of seed, would the produce of those various seeds be of different kinds?’

‘Yes, certainly.’

‘Well, just so with respect to the production of āyatanas.’

‘Very good, Nāgasena!’

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Translation by T.W. Rhys Davids · SuttaCentral · Public domain

The source expressly identifies this translation as public domain.

The Questions of King Milinda, translated from the Pali by T.W. Rhys Davids.

Part 1 (to section 5.4.10) was originally published as Volume xxxv of “The Sacred Books of the East”, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1890.

Part 2 (from section 5.5.1) was originally published as Volume xxxvi of “The Sacred Books of the East”, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1894.

This SuttaCentral edition was prepared by Bhikkhu Sujato based on the digital text of the Internet Sacred Text Archive. The work of the Sacred Text Archive to make this text publically available is gratefully acknowledged.

In preparing this edition minor editorial changes have been made. The structure has been adapted to agree with the Mahāsaṅgīti Pali text as found on SuttaCentral. In addition, the corrections proposed by the translator in the “Addenda et Corrigenda” of the original editions have for the most part been adopted.

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Prepared for SuttaCentral by Bhikkhu Sujato.

Published source. Translation wording and order are preserved; source headings and notes are retained, with navigation and formatting adapted for this reader.

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