Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 49.djvu/24

4 from his effulgence, like the splendour of the sun when it is free from all the influence of darkness,—a chief queen in the united assembly of all queens.

16. Like a mother to her subjects, intent on their welfare,—devoted to all worthy of reverence like devotion itself,—shining on her lord’s family like the goddess of prosperity,—she was the most eminent of goddesses to the whole world.

17. Verily the life of women is always darkness, yet when it encountered her, it shone brilliantly ; thus the night does not retain its gloom, when it meets with the radiant crescent of the moon.

18. ‘This people, being hard to be roused to wonder in their souls, cannot be influenced by me if I come to them as beyond their senses,’—so saying, Duty abandoned her own subtile nature and made her form visible.

19. Then falling from the host of beings in the Tushita heaven, and illumining the three worlds, the most excellent of Bodhisattvas suddenly entered at a thought into her womb, like the Nâga-king entering the cave of Nandâ.

20. Assuming the form of a huge elephant white like Himâlaya, armed with six tusks, with his face perfumed with flowing ichor, he entered the womb of the queen of king Suddhodana, to destroy the evils of the world.

21. The guardians of the world hastened from heaven to mount watch over the world’s one true ruler ; thus the moonbeams, though they shine