Desirous of witnessing the sublime ceremony of hair-cutting, they cautiously approach the Yâks, performing a sort of war dance, and chanting in chorus:—
Orah Pho, cha pai Kra Lâât. "Let us go to the Sacred Mount!"
Whereupon the Yâks, or evil angels, point their wonderful weapons at them, chanting in the same strain:—
Orah Pho, salope thâng pooang. "Let us slay them all!"
They then make a show of striking and thrusting, and princes, rajahs, and governors drop as if wounded.
The principal parts in the drama were assumed by his Majesty, and their excellencies the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The king was dressed for the character of P'hra Inn Suen, the Hindoo Indra, or Lord of the Sky, who has also the attributes of the Roman Genius; but most of his epithets in Sanskrit are identical with those of the Olympian Jove. He was attended by the Prime Minister, personating the Sanskrit Saché, but called in Siamese "Vis Summo Kâm," and the Minister of Foreign Affairs as his charioteer, Ma Talee. His imperial elephant, called Aisarat, caparisoned in velvet and gold, and bearing the supernatural weapons,—Vagra, the thunderbolts,—was led by allegorical personages, representing winds and showers, lightning and thunder. The hill, Khoa Kra Lâât, is the Sanskrit Meru, described as a mountain of gold and gems.
His Majesty received the prince from the hands of his nobles, set him on his right hand, and presented him to the people, who offered homage. Afterward, two ladies of the court led him down the flight of marble steps, where two maidens washed his feet with pure water in a gold basin, and wiped them with fine linen.
On his way to the Maha Phrasat he was met by a group of girls in charming attire, who held before him tufts of palm and branches of gold and silver. Thus he was conducted to an inner chamber of the temple, and seated on a costly carpet heavily fringed with gold, before an altar on which were lighted tapers and offerings of all descriptions. In his hand was placed a strip of palmyra leaf, on which were inscribed these mystic words: "Even I was, even from the first, and not any other thing: that which existed unperceived, supreme. Afterwards, I am that which is, and He that was, and He who must remain am I."
"Know that except Me, who am the First Cause, nothing that appears or does not appear in the mind can be trusted; it is the mind's Maya or delusion,—as Light is to Darkness."
On the reverse was inscribed this sentence:—