Vol. VI, No. 2.] 

 [N.S.l 



1 



65 



brought for him nine hundred thousand cart-loads of rice which 

 was produced there. Mice cleared it of the husks : there was 

 not a broken grain of rice. This very rice was in use in every 

 place belonging to the king. The bees prepared honey for him. 

 In the workshops bears smote with the sledgehammers. The 

 birds warbling sweetly brought him an oblation of song. 



Endowed with these Iddhis (supernatural powers), the king 

 one day despatched a golden chain and ordered the king of 

 Nagas, named Mahakala, who had seen all the four Buddhas 

 and was destined to live for a Kappa, to be brought before 

 him. The king seated him on a costly royal couch underneath 

 a white umbrella, and worshipped him with flowers of countless 

 hundreds of colours, those produced on the earth as well 

 as those that grow in the water, and also with golden flowers. 

 And then surrounding him on all sides with the sixteen 

 thousand dancers, decked with all kinds of ornaments, he 

 entreated him, ' Please bring before the ken of these eyes of 

 mine the form of the supreme Buddha of endless knowledge 

 who set in motion the excellent wheel of the Good Law.' 



Thereupon he made the image. It had a pure lustre 

 spreading throughout its person, was endowed with the eighty 

 minor characteristics of a Buddha, and beautified with the 

 thirty-two marks of a Mahapurusha. It seemed like the sur- 

 face of water, smiling with blossoming lotuses, pink and blue, 

 and it had the lustre of the sky illuminated by the refulgence 

 sparkling from the multitudes of the gleams of the rays of the 

 starry hosts. It had its fair head irradiated with a halo of blue, 

 yellow, and other colours, which surrounded it with variegated 

 hues which shone for a fathom round about it and made it look 

 like the peak of a golden mountain on which play the hues of 

 twilight, the rainbow, and the lightning. It afforded great de- 

 light to the eyes of the hosts of gods of the Brahma and Deva- 

 worlds men, Nagas, and Yakshas. The king, seeing the image, 

 performed the worship named Akkhipuja for a week. His 

 attachment to heretical and non- Buddhistic sects continued 

 for three years after his coronation. But in the fourth year he 

 became a believer in the Buddhist faith. 



His father, king Bindusara, was an adherent of Brahman- 

 ism. He used to feed sixty thousand Brahmans, heretics of 

 Brahman caste, and white-robed mendicants every day. King 

 Asoka was following the same system of charity in his palace. 



One day the king, while standing at a window, saw them 

 eating in an unrestrained way, with no control over their pas- 

 sions and uncomely in their deportment, and he thought within 

 himself : ' Such a system of charity must be abolished, and it 



should be bestowed on some fitting object/ Saving for; ed 

 this opinion, he summoned hi minister* md commanded them : 



4 Go and int.rnrliipp fchfl Samanas and Brahmanas of go<d report 



with you into the palace ; I will bestow gift- anthem. 



\s 



