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300 that the saint was stopping in her mango grove and came and invited him to a meal, and Gautama accepted the invitation.

From Ambapali's grove, Gautama went to Beluva. He felt his end approaching, and said to the faithful Ananda, "I am now grown old and full of years, my journey is drawing to its close, I have reached the sum of my days, I am turning eighty years of age. . . . Therefore, be ye lamps unto yourselves. Be ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Hold fast as a refuge to the truth."

At Kutagara, Gautama once more proclaimed to his followers the substance and essence of his religion, and enjoined upon them to practise it, to meditate upon it, and to spread it abroad, "in order that pure religion may last long and be perpetuated, in order that it may continue to be for the good and the happiness of great multitudes."

Having paid his last visit to Vaisali, Gautama then wandered through the villages of Bhandagrama, Hastigrama, Ambagrama, Jambugrama, and Bhoganagara, and then went to Pava. There Chunda, a goldsmith and blacksmith, invited him to a meal, and gave him sweet rice and cakes and a quantity of dried boar's flesh. Gautama never refused the poor man's offering, but the boar's flesh did not agree with him. "Now when the Blessed One had eaten the food prepared by Chunda, the worker in metal, there fell upon him a dire sickness, the disease of dysentery, and sharp pain came