Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/247

 elephant in the forest when he has lost the spoor of his hidden enemy and hopes to scent it again—and, in very truth, he had been mistaken in his enemy. Finally, he came slowly to within a few paces of the Master and bent his knee, as he was accustomed to do before his owner when the latter wished to mount him. And, followed by the tamed elephant, the Master, to the confusion of his enemies, entered the park to which he had just been on the way.

"In this way," so the Buddha ended his parallel, "does the Master take up Krishna's battle with the elephant, spiritualise, refine, complete it."

While I listened to this tale, how could I do other than think of Angulimala, the most savage of the savage, who but yesterday wished to destroy the Buddha, and had not only been tamed, but converted, by the irresistible might of the Buddha's personality, so that I now saw him devoutly sitting opposite to me in the ranks of the monks—changed, even in his outward appearance, to another. And so it seemed that the words of the Master were most particularly addressed to me, as the only person—at all events, outside the circle of the monks—who knew of this matter, and could understand the significance of his speech.

The Master now went on to speak of Krishna as the "Sixteen-thousand-one-hundredfold Bridegroom," for as such had our ancestors worshipped him here, and again I had a feeling as though secret reference were being made to me, for I remembered that, on the night of our last meeting, the hateful old witch had called the divine hero by this name, which I did not hear without a certain fluttering of the heart. With a gentle dash of humour the Master then related how Krishna took possession of all the treasures which he had carried off from the castle of the demon king,