[181] It was considered among the Brāhmans a sign of holiness to wear matted or platted hair. This is referred to in the striking Buddhist verse (Dhammapada, v. 394), “What is the use of platted hair, O fool! What of a garment of skins! Your low yearnings are within you, and the outside thou makest clean!”
[182] “Our master” is here, of course, the sage. It is a pretty piece of politeness, not unfrequent in the Jātakas, to address a stranger as a relation. See below, Jātaka No. 3.
[183] Literally “worth eighty and seven times a koṭi,” both eighty and seven being lucky numbers.
[184] Literally, “and caused him to declare, ‘The way of salvation for Nālaka.’” Perhaps some Sutta is so called. Tathagata, “gone, or come, in like manner; subject to the fate of all men,” is an adjective applied originally to all mortals, but afterwards used as a favourite epithet of Gotama. Childers compares the use of ‘Son of Man.’
[185] Anupādisesāya Nibbāna-dhātuyā parinibbāyi. In the translator’s “Buddhism,” p. 113, an analysis of this phrase will be found.
[186] Literally ‘a retinue thirty-six leagues in circumference,’ where ‘thirty-six’ is a mere sacred number.
[187] Kshatriya was the warrior caste.
[188] A state of religious meditation. A full explanation is given in the translator’s “Buddhism,” pp. 174-176.
[189] A gloss adds, “This should be understood as is related at full in the Sarabhaŋga Jātaka.”
[190] The members of the Buddhist Order of mendicant friars were in the habit of selecting some book or books of the Buddhist Scriptures, which it was their especial duty to learn by heart, repeat to their pupils, study, expound, and preach from. Thus the Dīgha Nikāya, or collection of long treatises, had a special school of “repeaters” (bhāṇakā) to itself.