born, a young Buddha. In thirty-five years he will become a Buddha, and it will be granted you to see him. This very day give up the world!"
Bearing in mind that his uncle was not a man to urge him without a cause, the young man, though born in a family of incalculable wealth,[1] straightway took out of the inner store a yellow suit of clothes and an earthenware pot, and shaved his head and put on the robes. And saying, "I take the vows for the sake of the greatest Being upon earth," he prostrated himself on the ground and raised his joined hands in adoration towards the Bodisat. Then putting the begging bowl in a bag, and carrying it on his shoulder, he went to the Himālaya mountains, and lived the life of a monk.
When the Tathāgata had attained to complete Enlightenment, Nālaka went to him and heard the way of salvation.[2] He then returned to the Himālayas, and reached Arahatship. And when he had lived seven months longer as a pilgrim along the most excellent Path, he past away when standing near a Golden Hill, by that final extinction in which no part or power of man remains.[3]
Now on the fifth day they bathed the Bodisat's head, saying, "Let us perform the rite of choosing a name for him." So they perfumed the king's house with four kinds of odours, and decked it with Dalbergia flowers, and made ready rice well cooked in milk. Then they sent for one hundred and eight Brāhmans who had mastered the three Vedas, and seated them in the king's house, and gave them the pleasant food to eat, and did
- ↑ Literally "worth eighty and seven times a koṭi," both eighty and seven being lucky numbers.
- ↑ Literally, "and caused him to declare, 'The way of salvation for Nālaka.'" Perhaps some Sutta is so called. Tathāgata, "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.'
- ↑ Anupādisesāya Nibbāna-dhātuyā parinibbāyi. In the translator's "Buddhism," p. 113, an analysis of this phrase will be found.
