Book Title: Lalit Vistara
Author(s): Rajendralala Mitra
Publisher: Asiatic Society

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Page 261
________________ CHAPTER XIV Thereupon the Bodhisattva caused the chariot to be turned back, and returned to the palace. Now, Bhikshus, on another occasion the Bodhisattva started, with a large retinue, by the western gate for the garden. He beheld a dead man on the road. with a shroud over him, and followed by his kinsmen, all crying, weeping and moaning with dishevelled hair, their herds bent down, beating their breasts and lamenting Socing this he, though aware of its nature, thus questioned the charioteer : "Charioteer, who is this man being carried on a bier, by men who are casting nails and hair and dust on their heads, and walking while beating their breasts and lamenting in many mournful words ?" The charioteer repli-d: "Lord, this man has died in the Jambudvipa. Never more shall he behold his mother and father, his son and wife. Abandoning his hon-e of enjoyment, his mother and father, his rela tivos and hius:nen, he has attained the next world.. He will never again cast a look on his kinsmen." The Bodhisattva exclained: "Fie on youth sucrounded by dreay; fie on health besinged by divers ailments, fie on man having a transient life; tie on the enjoyment of men of sense. "Even wore there not decay and disease and death, still there is the great pain to the sustainer of the fivefold senses (skandhan). What good is there in those who are always doomed to decay, disease and death? Turn back, I shall reflect on their deliverance." Thereupon the Bodhisattva caused the chariot to be turned.. back, and returned to the palace. Now, Bhikshus, when the Bodhisattva, ou another occasion, started with a large retinue for the garden by the northern gate, there appeared, through the grace of the Bodhisattva and the instrumentality of those Devaputras, a Bhikshu on the road. The Bodhisattva behold that Bhikshu standing calin, quiet, self

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