The Gâtakamâlâ; Or, Garland of Birth-StoriesAryasura
Religion
The Gâtakamâlâ; Or, Garland of Birth-Stories
Aryasura
Gautama Buddha -- Pre-existence
36, 37. 'The melodious music of the songs of birds longing for the
pleasure of love, the dances of the peacocks whom Lasciviousness has
taught that art, the sweet and praised buzzing of the honey-seeking
bees: they make together a forest-concert that will rejoice your mind.
38. 39. 'Further, the rocks overspread at night with the silk garment of
moonlight; the soft-stroking forest wind impregnated with the scent of
flowering trees; the murmuring noise of the rivulets, pushing their
waters over moving gravel so as to imitate the sound of a number of
rattling female ornaments--all this will gladden your mind in the
forest.'
This entreaty of his well-beloved wife filled him with a great desire to
set out for the forest. Therefore he prepared to bestow great largesses
on the mendicant people.
But in the king's palace the news of the banishment pronounced upon
Vi_s_vantara caused great alarm and violent lamentations. Likewise the
mendicants, agitated by sorrow and grief, became almost beside
themselves, or behaved as if they were intoxicated or mad, and uttered
many and various lamentations of this kind:
40. 'How is it that Earth does not feel ashamed, permitting the hatchets
to hew down that shady tree, her foster-child, the giver of such sweet
fruits? It is now plain she has been deprived of consciousness.'
41. 'If no one will prevent those who are about to destroy that well of
cold, pure, and sweet water, then in truth the guardians of the
world-quarters are falsely named so, or they are absent, or they are
nothing but a mere sound.'
42. 'Oh! Indeed Injustice is awake and Righteousness either asleep or
dead, since prince Vi_s_vantara is banished from his reign.'
43. 'Who possesses such a refined skill in occasioning distress, as to
have the cruelty to aim at starving us, the guiltless, who obtain a
scanty livelihood by begging?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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