Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 21.djvu/307

 complete extinction of the Lord, go in all directions in order that creatures shall write, keep, meditate, divulge this Dharmapary&ya, by no other's power but the Lords. And the Lord, staying in another world, shall protect, defend, and guard us.

Then the Bodhisattvas unanimously in a chorus addressed the Lord with the following stanzas :

2. Be at ease, O Lord. After thy complete extinction, in the horrible last period of the world, we will proclaim this sublime Stitra.

3. We will suffer, patiently endure, O Lord, the injuries, threats, blows and threats with sticks 1 at the hands of foolish men,

4. At that dreadful last epoch men will be malign, crooked, wicked, dull, conceited, fancying to have come to the limit when they have not.

5. 'We do not care but to live in the wilderness and wear a patched cloth ; we lead a frugal life ; ' so will they speak to the ignorant 2.

6. And persons greedily attached to enjoyments will preach the law to laymen and be honoured as if they possessed the six transcendent qualities.

7. Cruel-minded and wicked men, only occupied with household cares, will enter our retreat in the forest and become our calumniators.

8. The Tlrthikas 3, themselves bent on profit and honour, will say of us that we are so, and — shame on such monks! — they will preach their own fictions 4. Daftt/a-udgira/ia, for which I think we have to read da#</a- udgura»a. Durmatln. Dissenters, as the foremost of whom generally appear the Gainas, from the Buddhist point of view.

Ttrthik& vat* ime bhikshu svini kivyani dejayu^. Here