When he was seven years old, he was entered in the noviciate under the Buddha; and when he attained the necessary age, received full orders; and, as time went on, he became the most eloquent among the preachers. And the Master gave him the pre-eminence, saying, “Mendicants! the chief of my disciples in eloquence is Kassapa the Prince.” Afterwards, through the Vammīka Sutta, he attained to Arahatship. His mother, the nun, too, obtained spiritual insight, and reached Nirvāna.[284] And Kassapa the Prince became as distinguished in the religion of the Buddhas as the full moon in the midst of the vault of heaven. Now one day the Successor of the Buddhas, when he had returned from his rounds and taken his meal, exhorted the brethren, and entered his apartment. The brethren, after hearing the exhortation, spent the day either in their day-rooms or night-rooms, and then met together at eventide for religious conversation. And, as they sat there, they exalted the character of the Buddha, saying, “Brethren, the Elder Prince Kassapa, and the Lady his mother, were nearly ruined by Devadatta, through his not being a Buddha, and having no forbearance or kindness; but the Supreme Buddha, being the King of Righteousness, and being perfect in kindness and forbearance and compassion, became the means of salvation to them both!” Then the Master entered the hall with the dignity peculiar to a Buddha, and seating himself, asked them, “What are you sitting here talking about, O mendicants?” “Lord,” said they, “concerning your excellences!” And they told him the whole matter. “Not now only, O mendicants!” said he, “has the Successor of the Buddhas been a source of salvation and a refuge to these two; formerly also he was the same.” Then the monks asked the Blessed One to explain how that was; and the Blessed One made manifest that which had been hidden by change of birth. * * * * * Long ago, when Brahma-datta was reigning in Benares, the Bodisat came to life as a deer. When he was born he was of a golden colour; his eyes were like round jewels, his horns were white as silver, his mouth was red as a cluster of kamala flowers, his hoofs were bright and hard as lacquer-work, his tail as fine as the tail of a Tibetan ox,[285] and his body as large in size as a foal’s. He lived in the forest with an attendant herd of five hundred deer, under the name of the King of the Banyan Deer; and not far from him there dwelt another deer, golden as he, under the name of the Monkey Deer, with a like attendant herd. The king of Benares at that time was devoted to hunting, never ate without meat, and used to summon all the townspeople to go hunting every day, to the destruction of their ordinary work. The people thought, “This king puts an end to all our work. Suppose now in the park we were to sow food and provide water for the deer, and drive a number of deer into it, and close the entrance, and deliver them over to the king.”