[Footnote 24: "I preach with ever the same voice, taking enlightenment as my text. For this is equal for all; no partiality is in it, neither hatred nor affection.... I am inexorable, bear no love or hatred towards anyone, and proclaim the law to all creatures without distinction, to the one as well as to the other."--Saddharma Pundarika.] [Footnote 25: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, Vol. II., p. 247.] [Footnote 26: For the symbolism of the lotus see M.E., p. 437; Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, Vol. I., p. 299; M.E. index; and Saddharma Pundarika, Kern's translation, p. 76, note: "Here the Buddha is represented as a wise and benevolent father; he is the heavenly father, Brahma. As such ho was represented as sitting on a 'lotus-seat.' How common this representation was in India, at least in the sixth century of our era, appears from Varâhamihira's Brihat-Sainhita, Ch. 58, 44, where the following rule is laid down for the Buddha idols: 'Buddha shall be (represented) sitting on a lotus-seat, like the father of the world.'"] [Footnote 27: See The Northern Buddhist Mythology in _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, January, 1894.] [Footnote 28: See The Pictorial Arts of Japan, and Descriptive and Historical Catalogue, William Anderson, pp. 13-94.] [Footnote 29: See fylfot in Century Dictionary.] [Footnote 30: The word _vagra_, diamond, is a constituent in scores of names of sutras, especially those whose contents are metaphysical in their nature. The Vajrasan, Diamond Throne or Thunderbolt seat, was the name applied to the most sacred part of the great temple reared by Asoka on the site of the bodhi tree, under which Gautama received enlightenment. "The adamantine truths of Buddha struck like a thunderbolt upon the superstitious of his age." "The word vagra has the two senses of hardness and utility. In the former sense it is understood to be compared to the secret truth which is always in existence and not to be broken. In the latter sense it implies the power of the enlightened, that destroys the obstacles of passions."--B.N., p. 88. "As held in the arms of Kwannon and other images in the temples," the vagra or "diamond club" (is that) with which the foes of the Buddhist Church are to be crushed.--S. and H., p. 444. Each of the gateway gods Ni-ō (two Kings, Indra and Brahma) "bears in his hand the tokko (Sanskrit _vagra_), an ornament originally designed to represent a diamond club, and now used by priests and exorcists, as a religious sceptre symbolizing the irresistible power of prayer, meditation, and incantation."--Chamberlain's Hand-book for Japan, p. 31.]