After the army had been given to him he went down to [[28]]a river. Being wearied, he entered the water to bathe; and as he did so he saw the reflection of his face in the water, and thought, “As I have the eighteen signs of uncomeliness and a face like a lion, and as on that account the king’s daughter takes no pleasure in me, it is needless that such a one as I should remain alive. I will go and put myself to death.”
He entered into a copse, and was preparing to hang himself, when the king of the gods, Indra, reflected, “As this is a Bodisat of the Bhadrakalpa, and he is going to hang himself because he does not possess a beautiful appearance, I will fill his mind with hope.” So Indra said to him, “Youth, despair not! And in order that you may not kill yourself, set this jewel upon your head, and your courage will be restored to you.” Then Indra vanished.
When the youth Kuśa was going to enter into his house, the doorkeeper kept him back, saying, “Do not intrude here, for this is the house of the youth Kuśa.” “I am Kuśa,” he replied. As the doorkeeper would not believe him, Kuśa removed the jewel from his head. Then his appearance became what it had been before, so that the doorkeeper now believed him.
The youth Kuśa resolved to remain at that spot, and to let his father know. So he sent word to him saying, “I shall stay here.”
The king of the gods, Indra, pointed out to him the locality of four treasures. Kuśa had a city built of the four precious stones, and it was named Kuśinagara, inasmuch as the youth Kuśa abode there. He became the mightily ruling Chakravartin Kuśa. [[29]]
[1] Kah-gyur, vol. ii. pp. 188–192. See “An Eastern Love Story. Kuśa Jātakaya, a Buddhistic legend; rendered into English verse from the Singhalese poem of Alagiyavanna Mohoṭṭāla, by Thomas Steele.” London, 1871. See also critical remarks on the work in the Göttinger Gelehrten Anzeigen, 1872, stück 31, pp. 1205–1225, by Dr. Reinhold Köhler, who has called attention to the previously overlooked redaction in chap. xiii. of the Dsanglun (p. 91 of the translation). In the Tibetan original, the king’s name, Mahāśakuni, has been corrupted into Mahāschakuli. The name of his son, Woodblock, may be explained by the fact that kuśa, in the Chinese transcription kiu-che (or keou-che?) is a word of ambiguous meaning. In the Böhtlingk-Roth Sanskrit Dictionary, kuśa occurs in the sense of “wood.”—S. [↑]