Buddhist birth stories; or, Jataka tales, Volume 1
Religion
Buddhist birth stories; or, Jataka tales, Volume 1
Jataka stories, English
Advancing in this pomp and glory, the Bodisat, in that one night,
passed beyond three kingdoms, and arrived, at the end of thirty
leagues, at the bank of the river called Anomā. But why could not the
horse go still further? It was not through want of power: for he could
go from one edge of the round world to the other, as easily as one
could step across the circumference of a wheel lying on its side;--and
doing this in the forenoon, he could return and eat the food prepared
for him. But on this occasion he was constantly delayed by having to
drag himself along, and break his way through the mass of garlands and
flowers, cast down from heaven in such profusion by the angels, and the
Snakes, and the Winged Creatures, that his very flanks were hid. Hence
it was that he only got over thirty leagues.
Now the Bodisat, stopping at the river side, asked Channa, “What is
this river called?”
“Its name, my lord, is Anomā.”
“And so also our renunciation of the world shall be called Anomā
(illustrious),” said he; and signalling to his horse, by pressing it
with his heel, the horse sprang over the river, five or six hundred
yards in breadth, and stood on the opposite bank.
The Bodisat, getting down from the horse’s back, stood on the sandy
beach, extending there like a sheet of silver, and said to Channa,
“Good Channa, do thou now go back, taking my ornaments and Kanthaka. I
am going to become a hermit.”
“But I also, my lord, will become a hermit.”
“You cannot be allowed to renounce the world, you must go back,” he
said. Three times he refused this request of Channa’s; and he delivered
over to him both the ornaments and Kanthaka.
Then he thought, “These locks of mine are not suited for a mendicant.
Now it is not right for any one else to cut the hair of a future
Buddha, so I will cut them off myself with my sword.” Then, taking his
sword in his right hand, and holding the plaited tresses, together with
the diadem on them, with his left, he cut them off. So his hair was
thus reduced to two inches in length, and curling from the right, it
lay close to his head. It remained that length as long as he lived, and
the beard the same. There was no need at all to shave either hair or
beard any more.
The Bodisat, saying to himself, “If I am to become a Buddha, let it
stand in the air; if not, let it fall to the ground;” threw the hair
and diadem together as he held them towards the sky. The plaited hair
and the jewelled turban went a league off and stopped in the air. The
archangel Sakka caught sight of it with his divine eye, and receiving
it into a jewel casket, a league high, he placed it in the Tāvatiŋsa
heaven, in the Dāgaba of the Diadem.
272. Cutting off his hair, with pleasant perfumes sweet,
The Lordly Being cast it to the sky.
The thousand-eyed one, Sakka, the sky God,
Received it humbly in a golden casket.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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