Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/282

166 And he did so. And the others disappeared, and the Elder returned with the messenger.

And the Teacher, when the meal was over, addressed Jīvaka, and said, "Jīvaka, take Little Roadling's bowl; he will pronounce the benediction." And he did so. And the Elder, as fearlessly as a young lion utters his challenge, compressed into a short benedictive discourse the spirit of all the Scriptures.

Then the Teacher rose from his seat and returned to the Wihāra (monastery), accompanied by the body of mendicants. And when the monks had completed their daily duties, the Blessed One arose, and standing at the door of his apartment, discoursed to them, propounding a subject of meditation. He then dismissed the assembly, entered his fragrant chamber, and lay down to rest.

In the evening the monks collected from different places in the hall of instruction, and began uttering the Teacher's praises, — thus surrounding themselves as it were with a curtain of sweet kamala flowers! "Brethren, his elder brother knew not the capacity of Little Roadling, and expelled him as a dullard because in four months he could not learn that one stanza; but the Buddha, by his unrivalled mastery over the Truth, gave him Arahatship, with the intellectual powers thereof, in the space of a single meal, and by those powers he understood all the Scriptures! Ah !how great is the power of the Buddhas!"

And the Blessed One, knowing that this conversation had arisen in the hall, determined to go there; and rising from his couch, he put on his orange-coloured under garment, girded himself with his belt as it were with lightning, gathered round him his wide flowing robe red as kamala flowers, issued from his fragrant chamber, and