When the three years were over, the wise man came out of the forest, and came to Benares, and entered the park. The princes hearing of his arrival proceeded with a great company to the park, and making Sita the queen consort, gave to them both the ceremonial sprinkling. The sprinkling thus performed, the Great Being standing in a magnificent chariot, and surrounded by a vast company, entered the city, making a solemn circuit right-wise; then mounting to the great terrace of his splendid palace Sucandaka, he reigned there in righteousness for sixteen thousand years, and then went to swell the hosts of heaven.

This stanza of Perfect Wisdom explains the upshot:

"Years sixty times a hundred, and ten thousand more, all told,
Reigned strong-armed Rama, on his neck the lucky triple fold."

The Master having ended this discourse, declared the Truths, and identified the Birth: (now at the conclusion of the Truths, the land-owner was established in the fruit of the First Path:) "At that time the king Suddhodana was king Dasaratha, Mahamaya was the mother, Rahula's mother was Sita, Ananda was Bharata, and I myself was Rama-pandita."

Footnotes

^78:1 Edited and translated by V. Fausbol, The Dasaratha Jataka, Copenhagen, 1871. The story is like that of the Ramayana, except that here Sita is the hero's sister, not his wife.

^78:2 Gain and loss, fame and dishonour, praise and blame, bliss and woe.

^79:1 "Cool," which has in India the same pleasant associations as warm has for us.

^80:1 Sword, umbrella, diadem, slippers, and fan.

^80:2 Elephants, cavalry, chariots, infantry.

^81:1 The scholiast quotes on p. 129 a stanza which occurred in the Kalabahu Birth, No. 329 (vol. iii. p. 66 of this translation), beginning "Gain and loss".