Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/253

251 of the holy man, embraced the true religion and forsook the paths of wickedness.

The prison was demolished, and the jailer was burnt alive.

The above legend from the Asokâvadâna, which is given with further details by Hiuen Tsang (Beal, ii. 86), places the 'prison' or 'hell' at Pâtaliputra the capital.

Another form of the legend, which is merely referred to by Hiuen Tsang without comment, places the 'hell' at Ujjain in Mâlwa (Beal, ii. 271).

The conversion of the king, according to Hiuen Tsang, was due to the great saint Upagupta, whom he met after the destruction of the 'hell.' With the aid of Upagupta, King Asoka summoned the genii and commanded them to build stûpas throughout the land for the reception of the relics of Buddha's body, which had been taken out of the eight stûpas where they had originally been enshrined after the cremation of the Sâkya sage. At the moment of a solar eclipse the genii, in obedience to the commands of the king and the saint, simultaneously deposited the relics in all the stûpas.

The Avadâdna story is that when King Asoka desired to distribute the sacred relics of the body of Buddha among the eighty—four thousand stûpas erected by himself, he opened the Stûpa, of the Urn, wherein King Ajâtasatru had enshrined the cremation relics collected from seven of the eight original stûpas. The eighth, that at Râmagrâma, was defended by the