Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/200

84 of stopping the Bodisat; and standing in the air, he exclaimed, "Depart not, O my lord! in seven days from now the wheel of empire will appear, and will make you sovereign over the four continents and the two thousand adjacent isles. Stop, O my lord!"

"Who are you?" said he.

"I am Vasavatti," was the reply.

"Māra! Well do I know that the wheel of empire would appear to me; but it is not sovereignty that I desire. I will become a Buddha, and make the ten thousand world-systems shout for joy."

Then thought the Tempter to himself: "Now, from this time forth, whenever a thought of lust or anger or malice shall arise within you, I will get to know of it." And he followed him, ever watching for some slip, as closely as a shadow which never leaves its object.

But the future Buddha, making light of the kingdom of the world, thus within his reach, — casting it away as one would saliva, — left the city with great honour on the full-moon day of Āsāḷhi, when the moon was in the Uttarāsāḷha lunar mansion (i.e. on the 1st July). And when he had left the city a desire sprang up within him to gaze upon it; and the instant he did so the broad earth revolved like a potter's wheel, and was stayed: saying as it were to him, "O Great Being, there is no need for you to stop in order to fulfil your wish." So the Bodisat, with his face towards the city, gazed at it; and he fixed at that place a spot for the Kanthaka-Nivattana Cetiya (that is. The Shrine of Kanthaka's Staying — a Dāgaba afterwards built where this miracle was believed to have happened). And keeping Kanthaka in the direction in which he was going, he went on with great honour and exceeding glory.

For then, they say, angels in front of him carried sixty thousand torches, and behind him too, and on his right hand, and on his left. And while some deities, undefined