"Nothing is better than good company;
Kind offices of friendship here I see;
[45] Behold the lion, tiger, and the pard--
The black hind licks the faces of all three."

[paragraph continues] With these reflections the Bodhisatta plunged into the depths of the mountains, and there he embraced the true religious life, cultivating the Faculties and the Attainments, until at his life's end he passed into Brahma's heaven.

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After delivering this discourse, the Master identified the Birth: "In those days I was the ascetic of the story."

Footnotes

^29:2 No. 144.

^30:1 Cp. vol. i. no. 61, and 144, init.; a sacred fire was also kindled at a wedding, to be used for sacrifice and constantly kept up (Manu, 3. 67). So too now, the Agni-hotri in Kumaon begins fire-worship from the date of his marriage. The sacred fire of the marriage altar is carried in a copper vessel to his fire-pit. It is always kept alight, and from it must be kindled his funeral pyre (North Indian Notes and Queries, iii. 284).

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