dismount from your well-trained Sindh horse, and grasping this spear, with your left hand give him a blow on the flank, and then with this body of a thousand men advance quickly and with a stroke of your weapon fell to the ground this god of Kalinga, while we with a thousand spears will smite him and so shall Kalinga's tutelary deity perish, and then shall Kalinga be defeated and we shall be victorious."

"Good," said the king, and at a given signal from Nandisena he smote with his spear and his courtiers too smote with their thousand spears, and the tutelary god of Kalinga died then and there.

Meanwhile Kalinga was defeated and fled. And at the sight all those thousand councillors raised a loud cry, saying, "Kalinga is fled." Then Kalinga with the fear of death upon him, as he fled, reproached that ascetic and uttered the second stanza:

"Kalingas bold shall victory claim,
Defeat crowns Assakas with shame."

[7] Thus did your reverence prophesy,
And honest folk should never lie.

Thus did Kalinga, as he fled, revile that ascetic. And in his flight to his own city he durst not so much as once look back. And a few days afterwards Sakka came to visit the hermit. And the hermit conversing with him uttered the third stanza:

The gods from lying words are free,
Truth should their chiefest treasure be.
In this, great Sakka, thou didst lie;
Tell me, I pray, the reason why.

On hearing this, Sakka spoke the fourth stanza:

Hast thou, O brahmin, ne'er been told
Gods envy not the hero bold?
The fixed resolve that may not yield,
Intrepid prowess in the field,
High courage and adventurous might
For Assaka have won the fight.

[8] And on the flight of Kalinga, king Assaka returned with his spoils to his own city. And Nandisena sent a message to Kalinga, that he was to forward a portion for the dowry of these four royal maidens. "Otherwise," he added, "I shall know how to deal with him." And Kalinga, on hearing this message, was so alarmed that he sent a fitting portion for them. And from that day forward the two kings lived amicably together.

His discourse ended, the Master identified the Birth:-- "In those days these Young female ascetics were the daughters of king Kalinga, Sariputta was Nandisena and I myself was the hermit."

Footnotes

^1:1 See R. Morris, Folklore Journal, iii. 61.

^2:1 On the Coromandel coast.

^3:1 The scholiast says Aruna was the real name of the Assaka king.