Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/252

250 Another day, the Women of the palace, whom Asoka's rough features failed to please, mocked him by breaking off the leaves of an asoka tree in the garden. The king, when he heard of the incident, caused five hundred women to be burnt alive.

The ministers, horrified at these acts of cruelty, entreated the king not to defile his royal hands with blood, but to appoint an executioner to carry out sentences.

The king accepted this advice, and a man named Chandagirika—a wretch of unexampled cruelty, who loved to torture animals, and had slain his father and mother—was sought out and appointed Chief Executioner. For his use the king caused to be built a prison, which had a most attractive exterior, so that men might be tempted to enter it, and thus suffer all the tortures of hell which awaited them within; for the king had commanded that no man who entered this prison should leave it alive.

One day, a holy ascetic named Bâlapandita unwittingly entered the gate, and was instantly seized by the jailer. The holy man, though given seven days’ rcspite, was at the end of the term of grace ruthlessly cast into a seething cauldron of filth, beneath which a great ﬁre was kindled. The cruel jailer, looking in, beheld the saint, seated on a lotus, and unscathed by ﬁre. The miracle having been reported to the palace, the king himself came to see it, and being converted by the sight and the preaching