Does anyone have an idea of the original source? Again, I’m not interested in similar passages. I realize that other translations in The Gospel of Buddha are quite suspect, so this may not actually exist as an ancient text.
I just checked the book. In page xiii, it shows the list of Chinese books partly or wholly translated. The list does not present any Chinese Agama sutras, but one Chinese Vinaya text indicated.
Sometimes Carus just makes things up, most notoriously in his version of the dialogue with General Sīha, in which he has the Buddha speaking in favour of just war theory.
Sometimes he presents a pastiche of passages from multiple sources as if they were from a single sutta
And sometimes he takes an existing translation but gives his personal paraphrase of it, usually accurately but sometimes tendentiously.
In the present case I’m pretty sure that one of these three will apply. I come to this conclusion after searching Internet Archive for half a dozen phrases from your quotation and failing to find any of them in any book published before Gospel of the Buddha.
