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of the sky.452 However, I am able to praise you because I have increasing wisdom from your power. Even a small cloud fills the heavens by union with the east wind. You, O Lord, just from being seen or thought of by a man, are an unprecedented weapon for the destruction of the mass of karma. Today, surely there is an uprising of good karma in the world, since you destroy the ignorance of all, like the sun destroying darkness of day-blooming lotuses. Impurity will melt away from me without even taking its fruit, like the blossom of the sephālikā struck by moonlight.453 By that embodiment (of yours), O Blessed One, you take away pain from creatures, to say nothing of your figure engaged in mendicancy which bestows fearlessness on all. O Lord, you have come here to destroy karma, the root of existence, like a rutting elephant to a forest to root up trees. Just as ornaments, ropes of pearls, etc., are on the outside of my heart, so may you be inside my heart, O Lord of the Three Worlds."
CANDRAPRABHACARITRA
Childhood (47-53)
After he had recited this hymn of praise, Purandara took the Lord from Iśāna, carried him, and put him down by Queen Lakṣmanā's side according to rule. Then King Mahasena made a great festival. The birth of an Arhat is cause for a festival elsewhere; how much more in the house (where it occurs). Because his mother had a pregnancy-whim for drinking the moon, while he was still
452 39. The tittibha is a sand-piper. MW and Bate both give Parra jacuna for tiṭṭibha, but Sabda. gives it as a synonym of țițiharī, the sand-piper (Tringa goensis, Bate). This bird is said "to sleep with its legs extended upwards, as if to sustain the firmament; hence the phrase is applied to a person who undertakes an enterprise far above his capacities." Bate, s. v. taṭohara. Hindi proverb: Tatohare se asman thāmā jāegā: Will the sky be supported by the sand-piper?
458 43. Sephālikā, the Nyctanthes arbor tristis, the night-flowering jasmine. Dutt, p. 189, says its flowers " open at sunset, and before morning strew the ground thickly with their fallen corollas."
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