Continuing all her life long to keep the Commandments, Highborn after her death was reborn the daughter of the Asura king Vepacittiya, and for her goodness was rewarded with the gift of great beauty. When she grew up, her father mustered the Asuras together to give his daughter her pick of them for a husband. [206] And Sakka, who had searched and found out her whereabouts, donned the shape of an Asura, and came down, saying to himself, "If Highborn chooses a husband really after her own heart, I shall be he."

Highborn was arrayed and brought forth to the place of assembly, where she was bidden to select a husband after her own heart. Looking round and observing Sakka, she was moved by her love for him in a bygone existence to choose him for her husband. Sakka carried her off to the city of the devas and made her the chief of twenty-five millions of dancing-girls. And when his term of life ended, he passed away to fare according to his deserts.

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His lesson ended, the Master rebuked that Brother in these words, "Thus, Brethren, the wise and good of bygone days when they were rulers of the Devas, forbore, even at the sacrifice of their own lives, to be guilty of slaughter. And can you, who have devoted yourself to so saving a creed, drink unstrained water with all the living creatures it contains?" And he chewed the connexion and identified the Birth, by saying, "Ananda was then Matali the charioteer, and I Sakka."

[Note. Compare the commentary on Dhammapada, pp. 184 et seqq.; and Culla-vagga v. 13 in vol. ii. of Oldenberg's Vinaya (translated at page 100 of vol. XX. of the Sacred Books of the East) for the incidents of the Introductory Story. For the incident of Sakka and the Asuras in the Story of the Past, see Jataka-mala, No. 11 (J. R. A. S. 1893, page 315).]

Footnotes

^76:1 As to the rules for filtering water, see Vinaya Cullavagga v. 13.

^77:1 Garulas were winged creatures of a supernatural order, the inveterate foes of the Nagas, whose domain was the water. Cf. (e.g.) Jataka No. 154.

^80:1 One of the devalokas, or angelic realms, of Buddhist cosmogony, was the Tavatimsa-bhavanam, or 'Realm of the Thirty-three,' so called because its denizens were subject to thirty-three Devas headed by Sakka, the Indra of the pre-buddhist faith. Every world-system, it may here be added, had a Sakka of its own, as is indicated infra.

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