Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 21.djvu/301

 the N&ga-king, said to the Bodhisattva Pragñâkûta and the senior priest .S$riputra: Has the Lord readily accepted 1 the gem I presented him or has he not? The senior priest answered: As soon as it was presented by thee, so soon it was accepted by the Lord. The daughter of Sdgara, the Nga-king, replied: If I were endowed with magic power, brother 6$riputra, I should sooner have arrived at supreme, perfect enlightenment, and there would have been none to receive this gem.

At the same instant, before the sight of the whole world and of the senior priest .S&riputra, the female sex of the daughter of Sigara, the Ndga-king, disappeared; the male sex appeared 2 and she manifested herself as a Bodhisattva, who immediately went to the South to sit down at the foot of a tree made of seven precious substances, in the world Vimala (i. e. spotless), where he showed himself enlightened and preaching the law, while filling all directions of space with the radiance of the thirty-two characteristic signs and all secondary marks. All beings in the Saha-world beheld that Lord while he received the homage of all, gods, N&gas, goblins, Gandharvas, demons, Garudas, Kinnaras, great serpents, men, and beings not human, and was engaged A marginal reading from a later hand adds: anukampim upiddya, by grace, by mercy, graciously.

In ancient times such a change of sex is nothing strange. Sundry words for 'star,' e.g. t£r&, tdraka*, Latin stella, are feminine, whereas the names of some particular stars are masculine; so T&rd, the daughter of the Sea, Stella Marina, may have been identified with Tishya, or the Iranian Tishtrya, who equally rises from the sea; cf. Tishter Yasht (ed. Westergaard, p. 177). The daughter of the ocean seems to be identical with Ardv! Sura, celebrated in Abdn Yasht.