“By the exercise of penance,” responded Ananda, “in virtue of which the austere devotee quells the winds, allays the waters, expostulates convincingly with tigers, carries the moon in his sleeve, and otherwise performs all acts and deeds appropriate to the character of a peripatetic thaumaturgist.”
“This being so,” answered the king, “thy inability to heal my son manifestly arises from defect of merit, and defect of merit from defect of penance. I will therefore consign thee to the charge of my Brahmins, that they may aid thee to fill up the measure of that which is lacking.”
Ananda vainly strove to explain that the austerities to which he had referred were entirely of a spiritual and contemplative character. The Brahmins, enchanted to get a heretic into their clutches, immediately seized upon him, and conveyed him to one of their temples. They stripped him, and perceived with astonishment that not one single weal or scar was visible anywhere on his person. “Horror!” they exclaimed; “here is a man who expects to go to heaven in a whole skin!” To obviate this breach of etiquette, they laid him upon his face, and flagellated him until the obnoxious soundness of cuticle was entirely removed. They then departed, promising to return next day and operate in a corresponding manner upon the anterior part of his person, after which, they jeeringly assured him, his merits would be in no respect less than those of the saintly Bhagiratha, or of the regal Viswamitra himself.
Ananda lay half dead upon the floor of the temple, when the sanctuary was illuminated by the apparition of a resplendent Glendoveer, who thus addressed him:
“Well, backsliding disciple, art thou yet convinced of thy folly?”
Ananda relished neither the imputation on his orthodoxy nor that on his wisdom. He replied, notwithstanding, with all meekness:
“Heaven forbid that I should repine at any variety of martyrdom that tends to the propagation of my master’s faith.”
“Wilt thou then first be healed, and moreover become the instrument of converting the entire realm of Magadha?”
“How shall this be accomplished?” demanded Ananda.
“By perseverance in the path of deceit and disobedience,” returned the Glendoveer.