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CHAPTER SEVEN ointment? Stay here and wait a moment, best of Brāhmans, until we finish the bath. Look again at my form prepared with various embellishments, adorned with many ornaments, like gold with jewels."
Then the king, after he had bathed and put on fine garments and ornaments, presided over the assembly with great pride, like the sun over the sky. Then the two Brāhmans were allowed to appear before the king and observed his beauty. Depressed, they thought: “Where have his beauty, his splendor, his grace gone in a moment? Verily, everything of mortals is momentary."
The king said, “Why were you delighted before when you looked at me and now suddenly gloomy-faced from sadness ?” Then they said in a nectar-sweet voice: "O fortunate one, we are gods, dwelling in the heaven Saudharma. In the assembly of the gods Sakra described your beauty. We did not believe him and came here in the form of mortals to see it. We saw your beauty at first just as described by Sakra; just now, O king, it has changed. Now this body has become completely overspread by diseases, thieves of the whole wealth of beauty, like a mirror by a breath.”
After they had made this truthful answer and had quickly departed, the king saw himself lusterless like a tree consumed by frost. He thought, “Alas! this body is always the home of disease. Foolish people of little wit are infatuated with it in vain, indeed. This body is torn by manifold diseases originated within, like a tree by cruel collections of tree-worms. Even if it is pleasing to some extent outwardly, nevertheless it is like the fruit of the banyan filled with insects inside. 288 Disease instantly spoils the body's wealth of beauty like tendrils of duckweed
268 373. "Certain hymenopterous insects........ which frequent the wild fig, enter the minute orifice of the receptacle, apparently to deposit their eggs; conveying thus the pollen more completely to the stigmas, they insure the fertilization and consequent ripening of the fruit." See FIG, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Brandis, p. 600.
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