THE FESTIVAL OF KAW PRASAI.
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He next became the servant of a warrior king, for whom he acted in the capacity of counsellor and judge, winning for himself great renown for his wisdom and strength of character. On one occasion he is credited with engineering a tunnel through a mighty mountain, that his royal master might fall unawares upon a powerful enemy. The tunnel was constructed, and the attack made with complete success.
The sixth of this set of Birth Stories narrates his career as the Naga king, the monarch of the snake world. His two chief relatives were a human brother, and a sister who inhabited the body of a frog. He himself was a cobra, and one day a skilful snake-charmer captured him, and took him about from place to place on exhibition. He was freed from this humiliating condition by his brother and sister, who ingeniously tricked the wandering showman.
Then again he becomes the son of a king, and holds the position of a judge. Owing to his severity in putting down bribery and corruption, he incurred the displeasure of the Lord Chief Justice, who resented the loss of his valuable perquisites. One night the king dreamt that he had paid a visit to the heavenly regions. When he awoke he sent for the chief judge, and asked him if he could suggest any way of realising the journey, as he would very much like to visit those realms at his leisure. The judge suggested that the trip might be accomplished if the favour of the deities was first obtained by making them an offering commensurate with his desires. He suggested the sacrifice of the prince and all the members of his household. The king accepted the idea, and the sacrifice was planned. But several courtiers who had reasons for disliking the chief judge of the kingdom, revealed to their sovereign the enmity that existed between judge and prince. The king, furious at the trick that had been played upon him, instantly ordered the death of the wicked official, but the son, acting with his usual gentleness and mercy, pleaded for his enemy and obtained the remission of his sentence.
In the eighth story he is again a king; but this time devotes his life entirely to the noble practice of alms-giving. So great was his generosity that he soon beggared himself, and was forced to become a hermit. Having nothing left to distribute to those who sought to profit by his benevolence, he conceived the idea of finally giving his own body away in pieces. But the Devas, wishing to save him from the results of such a noble deed, brought him presents of nuggets of gold with which to satisfy the demands of those who daily asked him for alms.
The ninth story presents him to us as a wise man teaching and counselling a king. His fame was noised abroad even unto the uttermost ends of the earth. Amongst those who heard of his wisdom and purity was the Queen of the Nagas. She was so deeply impressed by the stories that reached her, that she fell madly in love with the famous counsellor, and wished, not figuratively, but literally, to possess his heart. From amongst her numerous attendants she chose one who was noted for his cunning, and sent him as her ambassador to the far-off land, with orders to bring back that which she so much desired. He met with a certain amount of success, for he won the body of the sage by gambling with the king, but all his efforts to put to death the wise old man were ineffectual. And when he was meditating as to the reason of the failure of his murderous attempts, the old man came to him, and spoke to him with words of such tenderness and truth that the emissary returned to the Naga Queen without his prize, but a better and a wiser man.
The tenth Birth Story is the last and the greatest, and bears the distinctive title of "The Great Birth." It is the story of his last existence upon earth as an ordinary human being, and marks the summit of his upward career, the final stage of his successive earthly transmigrations. This story, which we shall presently relate at length, was told by him, after he had become a Buddha, to a great gathering of his friends and relatives, in the famous banyan grove of his native city. Showers of rain fell from heaven, miraculously bathing his holy body, but leaving untouched the throng of people around him. Seven times he appealed to heaven and earth to bear him witness as to the truth of his narrative, and seven times was an answer given in the voice of the thunder and the quaking of the earth.