Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/206

90 And those five mendicants, Kondanya and the rest, begging their way through villages, market towns, and royal cities, met with the Bodisat there. And for six years they stayed by him and served him, while he was carrying out the Great Struggle, with different kinds of service, such as sweeping out the hermitage, and so on; thinking the while, "Now he will become a Buddha! now he will become a Buddha!"

Now the Bodisat thought, "I will perform the uttermost penance." And he brought himself to live on one seed of the oil plant, or one grain of rice, and even to fast entirely; but the angels gathered the sap of life and infused it into him through the pores of his skin. By this fasting, however, he became as thin as a skeleton; the colour of his body, once fair as gold, became dark; and the Thirty-two signs of a Great Being disappeared. And one day, when walking up and down, plunged in intense meditation, he was overcome by severe pain; and he fainted, and fell.

Then certain of the angels began to say, "The mendicant Gotama is dead." But others said, "Such is the condition of Arahats (saints)." And those who thought he was dead went and told Suddhodana the king, saying, "Your son is dead."

"Did he die after becoming a Buddha, or before?"

"He was unable to attain to Buddhahood, and fell down and died in the midst of the Great Struggle."

When the king heard this, he refused to credit it, saying, "I do not believe it. My son could never die without attaining to Wisdom!"

If you ask, "Why did not the king believe it?" it was because he had seen the miracles at the foot of the Jambu-tree, and on the day when Kāḷa Devala had been compelled to do homage to the Bodisat.

And the Bodisat recovered consciousness again, and stood up. And the angels went and told the king, "Your