Then the king returned, having reduced his frontier to order. The city was all decorated; he went round it in solemn procession, keeping it always on the right, and then proceeded to the palace. Next he entered the grove, wishing to see the Bodhisatta. He noticed the dirt and rubbish about the hermitage, and thinking he must be gone, he pushed back the hut door, and stepped in. There lay the anchorite. "He must he ill," thought the king. So he had the putrid food thrown away, and the hut set in order, and then asked,

"What is the matter, Sir?"

"Sire, I am wounded!"

Then the king thought, "I suppose my enemies must have done this. They could not get a chance at me, so they determined to do a mischief to what I love." So he turned him over, looking for the wound; but no wound could he see. Then he asked, "Where's the place, Sir?"

"No one has hurt me," replied the Bodhisatta, "only I have wounded my own heart." And he rose, and sat upon a seat, and repeated the following verses:

"No archer drew an arrow to his ear
To deal this wound; no feathered shaft is here
Plucked from a peacock's wing, and decked out fine
By skilful fletchers:--'tis this heart of mine,

"Once cleansed from passion by my own firm will,
And keen intelligence, which through desire
Hath dealt the wound that bids me fair to kill,
And burns through all the limbs of me like fire.

[276] "I see no wound from which the blood might flow:
My own heart's folly 'tis that pierces so."

Thus did the Bodhisatta explain matters to the king by these three stanzas. Then he made the king retire from the hut, and induced the mystic trance; and so he recovered his interrupted ecstasy. Then he left the hut, and sitting in the air, exhorted the king. After this the declared that he would go up to Himalaya. The king would have dissuaded him, but he said,

"O king, see what humiliation has come upon me while I dwelt here! I cannot live here." And although the king entreated him, he uprose in

the air, and departed to Himalaya, where he abode his life long, and then went to Brahma's world.

_____________________________

[277] When the Master had ended this discourse, he declared the Truths and identified the Birth:--at the conclusion of the Truths the backsliding Brother became a Saint, and some entered the First Path, some the Second, and some the

Third:--"Amanda was the king, and I was the hermit."

Footnotes

^189:1 Buddha, the Law, the Order.

[j252]