Chinese and Arabian Literature - E. Wilson - The Search For Mecca

248
THE TRAVELS OF FA-HIEN
large, and very daring and strong, crushing all opposition in
every expedition which they undertook. By and by they at-
tacked the kingdom of their real father, who became in consequence
greatly distressed and sad. His inferior wife asked
what it was that made him so, and he replied, " That king has
a thousand sons, daring and strong beyond compare, and he
wishes with them to attack my kingdom ; this is what makes
me sad." The wife said, " You need not be sad and sorrowful.
Only make a high gallery on the wall of the city on the east
and when the thieves come, I shall be able to make them re-
tire." The king did as she said ; and when the enemies came,
she said to them from the tower, " You are my sons ; why are
you acting so unnaturally and rebelliously ? " They replied,
" Who are you that say you are our mother?" " If you do
not believe me," she said, " look, all of you, towards me, and
open your mouths." She then pressed her breasts with her
two hands, and each sent forth five hundred jets of milk, which
fell into the mouths of the thousand sons. The thieves thus
knew that she was their mother, and laid down their bows and
weapons. The two kings, the fathers, hereupon fell into re-
flection, and both got to be Pratyeka Buddhas. The tope of
the two Pratyeka Buddhas is still existing.
In a subsequent age, when the World-honored one had at-
tained to perfect Wisdom and become Buddha, he said to his
disciples, " This is the place where I in a former age laid down
my bow and weapons."^ It was thus that subsequently men
got to know the fact, and raised the tope on this spot, which in
this way received its name. The thousand little boys were the
thousand Buddhas of this Bhadra-kalpa.^
It was by the side of the " Weapons-laid-down " tope that
Buddha, having given up the idea of living longer, said to
Ananda, " In three months from this I will attain to pari-nirvana
" ;
and king Mara* had so fascinated and stupefied Anan-
2 Thus Sakyamuni had been one of Buddhas appear in the course of it. Our
the thousand little boys who floated in present period is a Bhadra-kalpa, and
the box in the Ganges. How long back four Buddhas have already appeared,
the former age was we cannot tell. I It is to last two hundred and thirty-six
suppose the tope of the two fathers who millions of years, but over one hundred
became Pratyeka Buddhas had been and fifty-one millions have already
built like the one commemorating the elapsed."
laying down of weapons after Buddha * " The king of demons." The name
bad told his disciples of the strange Mara is explained by " the murderer."
events in the past. " the destroyer of virtue," and similar
5 Bhadra-kalpa, " the Kalpa of appellations. He is the personification
worthies or sages." " This." says Eitel, of lust, the god of love, sin, and death,
" is a designation for a Kalpa of sta- the arch-enemy of goodness, residing in
bility, so-called because one thousand the heaven Paranirmita Vasavartin on
;