friendship, which had not grown old in that long interval, to think, "To-day my friend is accomplishing the Great Renunciation, I will go and provide him with the requisites of a mendicant."
273. The three robes, and the alms bowl, Razor, needle, and girdle. And a water strainer — these eight Are the wealth of the monk devout.
Taking these eight requisites of a mendicant, he gave them to him. The Bodisat dressed himself in the outward signs of an Arahat, and adopted the sacred garb of Renunciation; and he enjoined upon Channa to go and, in his name, assure his parents of his safety. And Channa did homage to the Bodisat reverently, and departed.
Now Kanthaka stood listening to the Bodisat as he talked with Channa. And thinking, "From this time forth I shall never see my master more!" he was unable to bear his grief. And going out of their sight, he died of a broken heart; and was reborn in the Tāvatiŋsa heaven as an angel, with the name of Kanthaka. So far the sorrow of Channa had been but single; now torn with the second sorrow of Kanthaka's death, he returned, weeping and bewailing, to the city.
But the Bodisat, having renounced the world, spent seven days in a mango grove called Anūpiya, hard by that spot, in the joy of salvation. Then he went on foot in one day to Rājagaha, a distance of thirty leagues,[1]
- ↑ The word rendered league is yojana, said by Childers (Dictionary, s. v.) to be twelve miles, but really only between seven and eight miles. See my Ancient Coins and Measures, pp. 16, 17. The thirty yojanas here mentioned, together with the thirty from Kapilavastu to the river Anomā, make together sixty, or four hundred and fifty miles from Kapilavastu to Rājagaha, which is far too much for the direct distance. There is here, I think, an undesigned coincidence between Northern and Southern accounts; for the Lalita Vistara (Chap. xvi. at the commencement) makes the Bodisat go to Rājagaha viâ Vesāli, and this would make the total distance exactly sixty yojanas.
