During a severe illness which confined me a month or more to my room, I used to receive the most affectionate letters from this dear lady, signed Harriet Beecher Stowe; and when I once more returned to the palace, she took all the credit of my recovery from an illness so fatal as cholera as due to her intercessions and prayers. In one temple she had vowed that she would save seven thousand lives if mine were granted to her prayers.
I was perplexed and curious to know how she would perform the conditions of such a vow, but she assured me there would be no difficulty about it, and forthwith despatched her servant-women to the market to purchase seven baskets, containing each a thousand live fish, which, with great pomp and ceremony, were set free again in the river, and the seven thousand lives were thus actually saved.
One day, when I was sitting with my friend in her little study, she learned that I had recently lost a very dear relative, and she related to me, in a voice full of the tenderest sympathy and affection, the following Buddhist legend, which I give here as nearly as possible in her own words.
"In the village of Sârvâthi there lived a young wife named Keesah, who at the age of fourteen gave birth to a son; and she loved him with all the love and joy of the possessor of a newly found treasure, for his face was like a golden cloud, his eyes fair and tender as a blue lotus, and his smile bright and beaming like the morning light upon the dewy flowers. But when the boy was able to walk, and could run about the house, there came a day when he suddenly fell sick and died. And Keesah, not understanding what had happened to her fair lotus-eyed boy, clasped him to her bosom, and went about the village from house to house, praying and weeping, and beseeching the good people to give her some medicine to cure her baby.
"But the villagers and neighbors, on seeing her, said: 'Is the girl mad, that she still bears about on her breast the dead body of her child?'
"At length a holy man, pitying the girl's sorrow, said to himself: 'Alas! this Keesah does not understand the law of death; I will try to comfort her.' And he answered her, and said: 'My good girl, I cannot myself give you any medicine to cure your boy, but I know a holy and wise physician who can.'
"'O,' said the young mother, 'do tell me who it is, that I may go at once to him!'
"And the holy man replied, 'He is called the Buddha; he alone can cure thy child.'
"Then Keesah, on hearing this, was comforted, and set out to find the Buddha, still clasping to her heart the lifeless body of her child. And when she found him she bowed down before him, and said: 'O my lord and master, do you know of any medicine that will cure my baby?'
"And the Buddha replied and said: 'Yes, I know of one, but you must get it for me.'