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16. [The Elder:]
"Why now do you run about like one gone mad, like a bewildered deer?
Surely you have done an evil deed — why do you cry aloud?"
[The peta:]
"Venerable sir, I am a peta, gone to misery, an inhabitant of the world of Yama;
having done an evil deed, I have gone hence to the world of petas.
Sixty thousand hammers, complete in every way,
fall upon my head, and they split open my skull."
[The Elder:]
"What wrong deed was done by body, by speech, or by mind?
Through the ripening of what kamma have you gone hence to the world of petas?
Sixty thousand hammers, complete in every way,
fall upon your head, and they split open your skull."
[The peta:]
"Then I saw the Sambuddha Sunetta, of developed faculties,
seated at the root of a tree, meditating, fearing nothing from any quarter.
With the cast of a sling-stone I split open his skull;
through the ripening of that kamma I have come to this suffering (dukkha).
Sixty thousand hammers, complete in every way,
fall upon my head, and they split open my skull."
[The Elder:]
"With justice, vile man,
do sixty thousand hammers, complete in every way,
fall upon your head, and they split open your skull."
The Saṭṭhikūṭasahassa Petavatthu, the sixteenth.
The summary (uddāna) thereof:
Ambasakkhara and Serissaka, Piṅgala, Revatī, the chewer of sugar-cane;
the two boys, the two feeders on dung, Pāṭali and the lotus pond;
Akkhata, the amassers of wealth, the merchant's sons, the sixty thousand hammers —
by these the chapter is proclaimed.
The Mahāvagga, the fourth.
The Petavatthu is completed.
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THE THERAGĀTHĀ (VERSES OF THE ELDERS) OF THE KHUDDAKA NIKĀYA IN THE SUTTANTAPIṬAKA
Homage to that Blessed One, the Arahant, the Fully Self-Enlightened One.
English translation from the Pali (Siam Raṭṭha edition) — under review, not for citation.