Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/179

Rh leagues high, on the Crimson Plain, sixty yojanas broad, they stood respectfully aside. Their queens then came toward her, and taking her to the lake of Anotatta, bathed her to free her from human stains; and dressed her in heavenly garments; and anointed her with perfumes; and decked her with heavenly flowers. Not far from there is the Silver Hill, within which is a golden mansion; in it they spread a heavenly couch, with its head towards the East, and on it they laid her down. Then the future Buddha, who had become a superb white elephant, and was wandering on the Golden Hill, not far from there, descended thence, and ascending the Silver Hill, approached her from the North. Holding in his silvery trunk a white lotus flower, and uttering a far-reaching cry, he entered the golden mansion, and thrice doing obeisance to his mother's couch, he gently struck her right side, and seemed to enter her womb.

Thus was he conceived at the end of the Midsummer festival. And the next day, having awoke from her sleep, she related her dream to the rāja. The rāja had sixty-four eminent Brāhmans summoned, and had costly seats spread on a spot made ready for the state occasion with green leaves and dalbergia flowers, and he had vessels of gold and silver filled with delicate milk-rice compounded with ghee and sweet honey, and covered with gold and silver bowls. This food he gave them, and he satisfied them with gifts of new garments and of tawny cows. And when he had thus satisfied their every desire, he had the dream told to them, and then he asked them, "What will come of it?"

The Brāhmans said, "Be not anxious, O king! your queen has conceived: and the fruit of her womb will be a man-child; it will not be a woman-child. You will