141 
1892.] L. A. Waddell— Buddhist Pictorial Wheel of Life. 
to the hand of the gatherer, (5) a wish grantingcow which yields any 
drink wished for, (6) self-sprung crops (usually painted as Indian corn 
or maize), (7) in a golden stall a jewelled horse-of-fore-knowledge 
which Pegasus-like carries his rider wherever wished, throughout the 
worlds of the past, present, and future, (8) a lake of perfumed nectar 
(Skt. Amrita) which is the elixir vitce and the source of the divine bodily 
lustre. Shining is a pecularly divine attribute: the usually accepted 
etymology of the word for ‘ divinity,’ viz., Skt. Leva and Latin Deus, is 
the root Div, 1 to shine.’ 
2. Godly Bliss. The bliss of the gods is depicted by an assembly 
of be-jewelled gods and goddesses enjoying themselves in splendid 
palaces in the midst of a charming garden enamelled with flowers of 
which they make their wreaths. Gay birds warble in the foliage, and 
noble animals peacefully roam together there. Amongst the quadrupeds 
are deer, lions, and elephants with jewelled heads. Amongst the birds 
are the peacock, parrot, cuckoo and the ‘ Kala-pinha * which repeats 
the mystic ‘ Om mani padme, Hung.’ ! One of the blissful conditions of 
godly life especially dwelt upon, is that the most dainty morsels may 
be eaten without sense of repletion, the last more being as much 
relished as the first. 
In the centre of this paradise, and on a somewhat more magnifi- 
cient scale, is the palace of the superior gods entitled “ the peerless 
palace of Indra,”f which is situated in the celestial City of Amaravati 
—Indra’s Capital. It is invested by a wall and pierced by four gates 
which are guarded by the four divine kings of the quarters. It is a 
three-storied building; Indra occupying the basement, Brahma the 
middle and the indigenous Tibetan war-god—the dGra-lha the upper¬ 
most story. 
This curious perversion of the old Buddhist order of the heavens 
is typical of the more sordid devil-worship of 
The Heavens of the m ajority of the Lamas. The more learned 
Lamas. J J 
Lamas, however, adhere to the orthodox Bud¬ 
dhist cosmogony and they pourtray the series of the heavens graphically 
in the form of a Cliaitya, which I here reproduce, and which is very 
similar to that used diagrammatically by the Southern Buddhists.J 
# 1 
f ‘ The transcondentally superior house of LiiA-f dbang-po brOja-bjin. 
J Utham’s History of Buddhism in Ceylon, p. 74. 
S 
