[119] 9.
"Garlanded, diademed, wearing armlets,
your limbs anointed with sandalwood,
your countenance is bright and serene;
you shine like the very sun.
Non-human are these members of your assembly,
these who form your retinue;
and ten thousand maidens —
these who are your attendants.
They wear bracelets of gold
and are adorned in cloth of gold;
you are one of great majesty,
whose form makes the hair stand on end.
Yet you yourself cut off and devour
the flesh of your own back!
What wrong, then, has been done
by body, by speech, or by mind?
As the result of what kamma
do you yourself cut off and devour
the flesh of your own back?"
"To my own ruin I went about
in the world of the living
with slander (pesuñña) and false speech (musāvāda),
with fraud and with deception.
There, when I had gone into the assembly,
when the time for truth was at hand,
I cast aside the good and the right
and conformed to unrighteousness.
Thus does he devour himself
who is a backbiter (piṭṭhimaṃsika),
just as today I devour
the flesh of my own back.
This, Nārada, you have seen for yourself.
Those who are compassionate and wise would say:
'Speak no slander, speak no falsehood;
see that you do not become a backbiter!'"
The Story of the Corrupt Judge Peta (Kūṭavinicchayakapetavatthu), the ninth.
English translation from the Pali (Siam Raṭṭha edition) — under review, not for citation.