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288
THE GREAT KING OF GLORY.
CH.
Of those four and eighty thousand dishes too, Ânanda, one was that dish from which, at that time, I ate a measure of rice and the curry suitable thereto.
39. 'See, Ânanda, how all these things are now past, are ended, have vanished away. Thus impermanent, Ananda, are component things; thus transitory, Ânanda, are component things; thus untrustworthy, Ananda, are component things. Insomuch, Ananda, is it meet to be weary of, is it meet to be estranged from, is it meet to be set quite free from the bondage of all component things!
40. 'Now I call to mind, Ânanda, how in this spot my body had been six times buried. And when I was dwelling here as the righteous king who ruled in righteousness, the lord of the four regions of the earth, the conqueror, the protector of his people, the possessor of the seven royal treasures-that was the seventh time.
41. 'But I behold not any spot, Ânanda, in the world of men and gods, nor in the world of Mâra, nor in the world of Brahmâ,—no, not among the race of Samanas or Brâhmans, of gods or men,where the Tathầgata for the eighth time will lay aside his body?'
1 The whole of this conversation between the Great King of Glory and the Queen is very much shorter in the Gâtaka, the enumeration of the possessions of the Great King being omitted (except the first clause referring to the four and eighty thousand cities), and clauses 34-38, 40, and 41 being also left out, $ 39 and the concluding being placed in the mouth of the King immediately after $ 33. This may be perhaps partly explained by the narrative style in which the Gâtakas are composed—a style incompatible
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