stand." Then he said, "Ho there! ascetics even to save their life do not tell a lie, but you speak falsely," and he repeated this stanza:

[475] Although I bid thee stand, thou still dost forward fly,
And crying "Lo! I stand," methinks thou dost but lie:
Unseemly 'tis; this sword, O priest, thou must assume
To be a harmless shaft equipped with heron's plume .

Then the nymph spoke a couple of stanzas:

Steadfast in righteousness am I,
Nor change my name or family,
Here robbers but brief moment dwell,
Soon doomed to pass to woes of hell.

Be bold and captive here great Sutasoma bring
And by his sacrifice shalt thou win heaven, O king.

With such words the nymph put off her disguise as an ascetic and stood revealed in her own form, blazing in the sky like the sun. The man-eater hearing what she had to say and beholding her form asked who she was, and on her replying that she had come to life as the spirit of this tree, he was delighted and thinking, "I have looked upon my tutelary divinity," he said, "O heavenly sovereign, be not troubled by reason of Sutasoma, [476] but enter once more into thine own tree." The spirit entered into the tree before his very eyes. At that moment the sun set and the moon arose. The man-eater being versed in the Vedas and their auxiliaries and acquainted with the movements of the astral bodies, looking at the sky, thought, "To-morrow it will be the Phussa asterism; Sutasoma will come to the park to bathe and then will I lay hands upon him. But as he will have a strong guard and the dwellers throughout all India will come to guard him for three leagues around, at the first watch, before the guard is posted, I will go to the Migacira park and descend into the royal tank and there take my stand." So he went down into the tank and stood there, covering his head with a lotus leaf. By reason of his great glory the fish, tortoises and the like fell back and swam about in large bodies at the water's edge. Whence, it may be asked, came this glory of his? From his devotion in a former existence. For at the time when Kassapa was Buddha, he started a distribution of milk by ticket. Owing to this he became very mighty, and having got the Assembly of the Brethren to erect a hall for a fire to dispel the cold, he provided fire, firewood and an axe to cleave the wood. As the result of this he became famous.--So now when he had gone into the garden, while it was still early dawn, they picked a guard for three leagues round about, and king Sutasoma quite early in the morning after breakfast, mounted on a richly caparisoned elephant, with a complete force of four arms, sallied from the city. At that very moment a brahmin named Nanda from Takkasila,