Buddhist birth stories; or, Jataka tales, Volume 1
Religion
Buddhist birth stories; or, Jataka tales, Volume 1
Jataka stories, English
The four archangels, the Guardians of the world, lifting her up in her
couch, carried her to the Himālaya mountains, and placing her under
the Great Sāla-tree, seven leagues high, on the Crimson Plain, sixty
yojanas broad, they stood respectfully aside. Their queens then came
toward her, and taking her to the lake of Anotatta, bathed her to
free her from human stains; and dressed her in heavenly garments; and
anointed her with perfumes; and decked her with heavenly flowers. Not
far from there is the Silver Hill, within which is a golden mansion; in
it they spread a heavenly couch, with its head towards the East, and on
it they laid her down. Then the future Buddha, who had become a superb
white elephant, and was wandering on the Golden Hill, not far from
there, descended thence, and ascending the Silver Hill, approached her
from the North. Holding in his silvery trunk a white lotus flower, and
uttering a far-reaching cry, he entered the golden mansion, and thrice
doing obeisance to his mother’s couch, he gently struck her right side,
and seemed to enter her womb.[174]
Thus was he conceived at the end of the Midsummer festival. And the
next day, having awoke from her sleep, she related her dream to the
rāja. The rāja had sixty-four eminent Brāhmans summoned, and had costly
seats spread on a spot made ready for the state occasion with green
leaves and dalbergia flowers, and he had vessels of gold and silver
filled with delicate milk-rice compounded with ghee and sweet honey,
and covered with gold and silver bowls. This food he gave them, and he
satisfied them with gifts of new garments and of tawny cows. And when
he had thus satisfied their every desire, he had the dream told to
them, and then he asked them, “What will come of it?”
The Brāhmans said, “Be not anxious, O king! your queen has conceived:
and the fruit of her womb will be a man-child; it will not be a
woman-child. You will have a son. And he, if he adopts a householder’s
life, will become a king, a Universal Monarch; but if, leaving his
home, he adopt the religious life, he will become a Buddha, who will
remove from the world the veils of ignorance and sin.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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