Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/12

 the opal, were resolved into an enamel of incomparable beauty.

Deeply moved, the Lord Buddha stayed his steps. Joy welled up within him, and his heart leaped forth to greet those familiar forms, bound up for him with so many memories: the Grey Horn, the Broad Vale, the Scer's Crag, the Vulture's Crest—"whose noble summit towers, roof-like, over all the rest"—and, above all, Vibhara, the Mountain of the Hot Springs, under whose shadow, in the cave beneath the Sattapanni tree, the homeless wanderer had found his first home, his first resting-place on the final journey from Sansara to Nirvana.

For when, in that bygone time, "being still in the flower of his life, his hair dark and glossy, in the unimpaired enjoyment of all that happy youth could afford and early manhood represent, unmoved by the wishes of his parents as by their tears and lamentations," he had left his royal father's house in the northern country of the Sakyas and turned his steps toward the valley of the Gunga, he had there, under the shadow of the lofty Vibhara, allowed himself his first lengthened stay, going every morning into Rajagriha to beg for food.

It was at that time also, and in that very cave, that Bimbisara, King of Magadha, had visited him, imploring, though in vain, that he should return to the home of his fathers, and to the life of the world, until at length the royal visitor, strangely moved by the words of the young ascetic, felt the first tremblings of the new faith that later made him a follower of the Buddha.

Since that day full fifty years had passed away, and in the interval he had changed not alone the course of his own life, but also that of the world. How vast the difference between that past, when he dwelt in yonder cave and