Story of the mendicant who travelled from Kaśmíra to Páṭaliputra.
There is in Kaśmíra a famous holy place, sacred to Śiva, called Vijaya. In it there lived a certain mendicant, who was proud of his knowledge. He worshipped Śiva, and prayed—“May I be always victorious in controversy,”—and thereupon he set out for Páṭaliputra to exhibit his skill in dispute. And on the way he passed forests, rivers, and mountains, and having reached a certain forest, he became tired, and rested under a tree. And immediately he saw, as he was refreshing himself in the cool breeze of the tank, a student of religion, who had come there dusty with a long journey, with his staff and water-pot in his hand. When he sat down, the wandering mendicant asked him whence he came and whither he was going. The student of religion answered, “I come from that seat of learning Páṭaliputra, and I am going to Kaśmíra to conquer the Paṇḍits there in discussion. When the mendicant heard this speech of the religious student’s, he thought, “If I cannot conquer this one man who has left Páṭaliputra, how shall I manage to go and overcome the many who remain there?”
So reflecting, he began to reproach that religious student, “Tell me, religious student, what is the meaning of this inconsistent conduct on your part? How comes it that you are at the same time a religious student, eager for liberation, and a man afflicted with the madness of disputatiousness? Do you seek to be delivered from the world by binding yourself with the conceit of controversy? You are quenching heat with fire, and removing the feeling of cold with snow; you are trying to cross the sea on a boat of stone; you are striving to put out a fire by fanning it. The virtue of Bráhmans is patience, that of Kshatriyas is the rescue of the distressed; the characteristic quality of one who desires liberation is quietism; disputatiousness is said to be the characteristic of Rákshasas. Therefore a man who desires liberation must be of a quiet temperament, putting away the pain arising from alternations of opposites, fearing the hindrances of the world. So cut down with the axe of quietism this tree of mundane existence, and do not water it with the water of controversial conceit.” When he said this to the religious student, he was pleased, and bowed humbly before him, and saying, “Be you my spiritual guide,”—he departed by the way that he came. And the mendicant remained, laughing, where he was, at the foot of the tree, and then he heard from within it the conversation of a Yaksha, who was joking with his wife.[1] And while the mendicant was listening, the Yaksha in sport struck his wife with a garland of flowers, and she, like a cunning female, pretended that she was dead, and immediately her attendants raised a cry of grief. And after a long time she opened her eyes, as if her life had returned to her. Then the Yaksha her husband said to her; “What have you seen?” Then she told the following invented story; “When you struck me with the garland, I saw a black man come, with a noose in his hand, with flaming eyes, tall, with upstanding hair, terrible, darkening the whole horizon with his shadow. The ruffian took me to the abode of Yama, but his officers there turned him back, and made him let me go.” When the Yakshiṇí said this, the Yaksha laughed, and said to her, “O dear! women cannot be free from deception in any thing that they do. Who ever died from being struck with flowers? Who ever returned from the house of Yama? You silly woman, you have imitated the tricks of the women of Páṭaliputra.”