"No," was the reply, "we do not let women have a share in the good work."

Then said the carpenter to them, "My masters, what is this you say? Save the Realm of Brahma, there is no place from which women are excluded. Take the pinnacle, and our work will be complete."

Consenting, they took the pinnacle and completed their hall. They had benches put up, and jars of water set inside, providing also a constant supply of boiled rice. Round the hall they built a wall with a gate, strewing the space inside the wall with sand and planting a row of fan-palms outside. Thoughtful too caused a pleasaunce to be laid out at this spot, and not a flowering or fruit-bearing tree could be named which did not grow there. Joy, too, caused a water-tank to be dug in the same place, covered over with the five kinds of lotuses, beautiful to behold. High-born did nothing at all.

The Bodhisatta fulfilled these seven injunctions,--to cherish one's mother, to cherish one's father, to honour one's elders, to speak truth, [202] to avoid harsh speech, to eschew slander, and to shun niggardliness:--

Whoso supports his parents, honours age,
Is gentle, friendly-spoken, slandering not,
Unchurlish, truthful, lord--not slave--of wrath,
--Him e'en the Thirty Three shall hail as Good.

Such was the praiseworthy state to which he grew, and at his life's close he passed away to be reborn in the Realm of the Thirty-three as Sakka, king of Devas; and there too were his friends reborn.

In those days there were Asuras dwelling in the Realm of the Thirty-three. Said Sakka, King of Devas, "What good to us is a kingdom which others share?" So he made the Asuras drink the liquor of the Devas, and when they were drunken, he had them hurled by the feet on to the steeps of Mount Sineru. They tumbled right down to 'The Asura Realm,' as it is called,--a region on the lowest level of Mount Sineru, equal in extent to the Realm of the Thirty-three. Here grows a tree, resembling the Coral Tree of the Devas, which lasts for an aeon and is called the Pied Trumpet-flower. The blossoms of this tree shewed them at once that this was not the Realm of Devas, for there the Coral Tree blooms. So they cried, "Old Sakka has made us drunk and cast us into the great deep, seizing on our heavenly city." "Come," they shouted, "let us win back our own realm from him by force of arms." And up the sides of Sineru they climbed, like ants up a pillar.

Hearing the alarm given that the Asuras were up, Sakka went out into the great deep to give them battle, but being worsted in the fight turned and fled away along crest after crest of the southern deep in his 'Chariot of Victory,' which was a hundred and fifty leagues long.