Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/298

 saw a gigantic monk step forward and lay his hand upon Ananda's shoulder.

"Brother Ananda, the Master calls for thee."

So I was really, then, to see the Buddha in his last moments, after all! At once my strength returned and rendered me capable of following.

That instant Angulimala observed and recognised us. Reading his troubled glance aright, I said—

"Have no fear, brother, that we shall disturb the last moments of the Perfect One by loud weeping and female cries. We have taken no rest by the way from Vesali, here, in order that we might see the Master once again. Do not refuse us admission to him; we will be strong."

On which he signed to us to follow them.

We did not have far to go.

In a little glade of the forest, there were perhaps two hundred monks collected, who stood around in a semicircle. In their midst rose two Sala trees—one splendid mass of white blossoms—and, beneath them, on a bed of yellow cloaks spread out between the two trunks, rested the Perfect One, his head supported on his right arm. And the blossoms rained softly down upon him.

Behind him, I saw in spirit the pinnacles of the Himavat rise, clad in their eternal snows and now veiled in the darkness of night, and I seemed to catch again the dreamlike glimpse I had just enjoyed, and to which I owed it that I now stood here, in the presence of the Perfect One. And the unearthly glow which had come to me with such a greeting across the distances flashed towards me again, in spiritual glorification, from His face. He also, the Master, appeared, even as though those floating cloudlike peaks, not to belong to this earth