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244
KALPA SÚTRA.
vans, messengers, and frontier-guards, he-the lord and chief of men, a bull and a lion among men, shining with excellent lustre and glory, lovely to behold like the moon emerging from a great white cloud in the midst of the flock of the planets and of brilliant stars and asterisms left the bathing-house, (61) entered the exterior hall of audience and sat down on his throne with the face towards the east. (62)
On the north-eastern side he ordered eight state chairs, covered with cloth and auspiciously decorated with white mustard, to be set down. Not too far from and not too near to himself, towards the interior of the palace, he had a curtain drawn. It was adorned with different jewels and precious stones, extremely worth seeing, very costly, and manufactured in a famous town; its soft cloth was all over covered with hundreds of patterns and decorated with pictures of wolves, bulls, horses, men, dolphins, birds, snakes, Kinnaras, deer, Sarabhas, Yaks, Samsaktas, elephants, shrubs, and plants. Behind it he ordered to be placed, for the Kshatriyâni Trisalâ, an excellent chair of state, decorated with arabesques of different jewels and precious stones, outfitted with a coverlet and a soft pillow, covered with a white cloth, very soft and agreeable to the touch. Then he called the family servants and spoke thus : (63)
Quickly, O beloved of the gods, call the interpreters of dreams who well know the science of prognostics with its eight branches, and are well versed in many sciences besides !'
When the family servants were thus spoken to by king Siddhartha, they—glad, pleased, and joyful, &c.--laid the folded hands on their heads and
