"Send messengers to north, south, east, and west
The brahmins and ascetics to invite:
Provide them food and drink, a place to rest,
Clothes, and all else that may be requisite.

[400] "Give thou the food and drink which satisfies
Sages and holy brahmins, full of faith:
Who gives and rules as well as in him lies
Will go to heaven all blameless after death.

"But if, surrounded by thy womankind
Thou feel thy passion and desire too strong,
This verse of poetry then bear in mind
And sing it in the midst of all the throng:

"No roof to shelter from the sky, amid the dogs he lay,
His mother nursed him as she walked: but he's a king to-day."

Such was the Great Being's advice. Then he said, "I have given you my counsel. And now do you become an ascetic or not, as you think fit; but I will follow up the result of my own deeds." Then he rose up in the air, and shook off the dust of his feet over him, and departed to Himalaya. [401] And the king saw it, and was greatly moved; and relinquishing his kingdom to his eldest son, he called out his army, and set his face in the direction of Himalaya. When the Great Being heard of his coming, he

went with his attendant sages and received him, and ordained him to the holy life, and taught him the means of inducing mystic ecstasy. He developed the Faculty of mystical meditation. Thus these two together became destined for Brahma's world.

When the Master had ended his discourse, he said: "Thus, Brethren, wise men of old continued firm friends through the course of three or four existences." Then he identified the Birth: "At that time Ananda was the wise Sambhuta, and I myself was the wise Citta."

Footnotes

^244:1 Taking konda- to be the same as kunda-.

^247:1 Lit. a hundred (pieces of money): or (with the scholiast) "A hundred villages I do bestow."