Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/247

Rh The prince understood, and became a convert. Some time afterwards he was on a hunting expedition in the forest, when he saw the saint Mahâdharmarakshita, a man of perfect piety and freed from the bonds of sin, sitting under a tree, and being fanned with a branch by an elephant. The prince, beholding this sight, longed for the time when he might become even as that saint and dwell at peace in the forest. The saint, in order to incline the heart of the prince unto the faith, soared into the air and alighted on the surface of the water of the Asokârâma tank, wherein he bathed, while his robes remained poised in the air. The prince was so delighted with this miracle that he at once resolved to become a monk, and begged the king for permission to receive ordination.

The, king, being unwilling to thwart his pious desire, himself led the' prince to the monastery, where ordination was conferred by the saint Mahâdharma-rakshita. At the same time one hundred thousand other persons were ordained, and no man can tell the number of those who became monks by reason of the example set by the prince.

THE LAST DAYS OF ASOKA

The branch of the holy bo-tree, brought to Ceylon in the manner above related, was dispatched in the eighteenth year of the reign of Asoka the Pious, and planted in the Mahâmeghavana garden in Ceylon.

In the twelfth year after that event, Asandhimitrâ,