Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/170

54 They are not hard of hearing, they are not classed among the dumb.

255. They do not become women; among hermaphrodites and eunuchs They are not found, — these men destined to Buddhahood.

256. Free from the deadly sins, everywhere pure-living, They follow not after vain philosophy, they perceive the working of Karma.

257. Though they dwell in heaven, they are not born into the Unconscious state, Nor are they destined to rebirth among the angels in the Pure Abodes.

258. Bent upon renunciation, holy in the world and not of it, They walk as acting for the world's welfare, fulfilling all perfection.

While he was thus fulfilling the Perfections, there was no limit to the existences in which he fulfilled the Perfection of Almsgiving. As, for instance, in the times when he was the brahman Akitti, and the brahmin Saŋkha, and the king Dhanañjaya, and Mahā-sudassana, and Maha-govinda, and the king Nimi, and the prince Canda, and the merchant Visayha, and the king Sivi, and Vessantara. So, certainly, in the Birth as the Wise Hare, according to the words,

259. When I saw one coming for food, I offered my own self, There is no one like me in giving, such is my Perfection of Almsgiving,

1 In the four highest of the thirty-one spheres of existence the angels are unconscious, and the five worlds below these are called the Pure Abodes.