Note 283 — Chapter II · SĪLAVAGGA.
Robert Cæsar Childers translation
The thirty-two constituent parts will be found enumerated in the Khuddaka Pāṭha, p. 3, and most of them are mentioned in the following verses, which are not attributed to the ‘attractive’ young wife, and which sound wooden enough after her spirited outburst. Possibly they are a quotation by this commentator of some monkish rhymes he thinks appropriate to the occasion. The whole of the conversation is omitted in the Dhammapada commentary.
Bound together by bones and sinews, O’erspread with flesh and integument, The body is hidden ‘neath its skin,— It seems not as it really is! It is filled inside—the trunk is filled— With liver, and with abdomen; With heart and lungs, kidney and spleen; With mucus, matter, sweat, and fat; With blood, and grease, and bile, and marrow. And from each of its nine orifices Impurity flows ever down: Rheum from the eye, wax from the ear, From the nose mucus, vomit from the mouth; And bile and phlegm do both come out From the perspiring, dirty frame. Its hollow head, too, is but filled With the nerve-substance of the brain. Yet the fool, whom dullness never leaves, He thinks it beautiful and bright. The body causes endless ills;— Resembles just a upas-tree; The dwelling-place of all disease, Is but a mass of misery. Were the inside of this body Only visible without, One would have to take a stick in hand To save oneself from crows and dogs! Evil-smelling and impure, The body’s like a filthy corpse; Despised by those who’ve eyes to see, It’s only praised by those who’re fools!