for the ascetic life." Vissakamma did so. The Great Being, when he reached the place, saw a road for a single foot-passenger and thought, "This must be a place for ascetics to dwell in," and travelling by this road and meeting with no one, he entered the hut of leaves. On seeing the requisites for ascetic life he said, "Sakka, king of heaven, methinks, knew that I had renounced the world"; and, doffing his cloak, he put on an inner and outer robe of dyed bark and threw an antelope's skin over one shoulder. Then be bound up his coil of matted locks, shouldered a pingo of three bushels of grain, took a mendicant's staff and sallied forth from his hut, and climbing up the covered walk, he paced up and down it several times. Thus did he glorify the forest with the beauty of asceticism, and after performing the Kasina ritual, on the seventh day of his religious life he developed the eight Attainments and the five Faculties, and lived quite alone, feeding on what he could glean and on roots and berries. His parents and a crowd of friends and kinsfolk and acquaintances, not seeing him, wandered about disconsolate. Then a certain forester, who had seen and recognised the Great Being in the Kavittha hermitage, told his parents and they informed the king of it. The king said, "Come, let us go and see him," and taking the father and mother, and accompanied by a great multitude, he arrived at the bank of the Godhavari by the road which the forester pointed out to him. The Bodhisatta, on coming to the river-bank, seated himself in the air, and after teaching them the Law, [133] he brought them all into his hermitage, and there too, seated in the air, he revealed to them the misery involved in sensual desires and taught them the Law. And all of them, including the king, adopted the religious life. The Bodhisatta continued to dwell there, surrounded by a band of ascetics. And the news that he was dwelling there was blazed abroad throughout all India. Kings with their subjects came and took orders at his hands, and there was a great assembly of them till they gradually numbered many thousands. Whoever reflected on thoughts of lust, or the wish to hurt or injure others, to him came the Great Being, and seated in the air before him, he taught him the Law and instructed him in the Kasina ritual. His seven chief pupils were Salissara , Mendissara, Pabbata, Kaladevala, Kisavaccha, Anusissa, and Narada. And they, abiding in his admonition, attained to ecstatic meditation and reached perfection. By and bye the Kavittha hermitage became crowded, and there was no room for the multitude of ascetics to dwell there. So the Great Being, addressing Salissara, said, "Salissara, this hermitage is not big enough for the crowd of ascetics; do you go with this company of them and take up your abode near the town of Lambaculaka in