"Safe is the man who walks in righteousness;
Religion well observed has power to bless;
Happy the righteous man and never he
While he is righteous falls in misery .

"Is it not true, his proper fruit from right or wrong shall spring?
Right leads to heaven, unrighteousness a man to hell must bring .

[499] When the Great Being had thus declared the Law in twenty-four stanzas, he said, "O great king! keep your kingdom to yourself; I want none of it. Even as I am talking with you, disease, old age, and death draw nearer to me. Stay where you are." Then, as a mad

elephant might burst his steel chains, as a young lion might break out of a golden cage, he burst his carnal desires; and saluting his parents, he departed. Then his father said, "I want not the Kingdom!" and leaving it went with him. When he was gone, the queen and courtiers, brahmins, householders, and everyone else who dwelt in the city, left their houses and went away. There was a great concourse; the crowd covered twelve leagues. With this crowd he set out for Himalaya.

When Sakka perceived that he had departed, he sent Vissakamma to make a hermitage twelve leagues long and seven wide, and bade him put within it all things requisite for the ascetic life. How the Great Being proceeded to admit these into the Brotherhood, and admonished them, and how they became destined for Brahma's world, or entered upon the Third Path, all must be repeated again as before.

This discourse ended, the Master said: "Thus, Brethren, the Tathagata has made the Great Renunciation before"; after which he identified the Birth: "At that time the king's parents were the mother and father, the Buddha's followers were their followers, and I was myself the Wise Ayoghara."

Footnotes

^304:1 For the three Kusalasampattayo see Childers, p. 439.

^304:2 Dhammapada, 116.

^306:1 Guthanirayo.

^306:2 The scholiast explaining this quotes the following lines:

"First seed, then embryo, then shapeless flesh,
Then something solid, out of which soon grow
Thighs, hair on head and body, with the nails:
Whatever food or drink the mother takes,
The baby lives on, in his mother's womb."

^307:1 Horse, Foot, Chariots, Elephants.

^307:2 The text is: "like a drunkard's cloth," but this cryptic utterance is thus explained by the scholiast.

^307:3 The Moon.

^308:1 This stanza is given in the Introduction to the Jataka book, no. 224 (not in our translation): see Rhys Davids, Buddhist Birth Stories, p. 34. Also in Dhammapada, p. 126, Theragatha. 35.

^308:2 See Dhammapada, p. 90 in Fausboll's Commentary, 1. 3.