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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
aloud and the gods sang like Gandharvas; recalling again and again the Master's virtues, they recited then again and again. The gods beat violently hundreds of musical instruments, mṛdanga, pāṇava,268 et cetera, as well as their own breasts from grief. Goddesses danced before the Master's bier, their feet stumbling in the dance-steps from grief, like inexperienced dancers. The gods of the four classes worshipped the Lord's bier with divine cloths, ornaments, necklaces, et cetera, and garlands of flowers. Laymen and laywomen, filled with grief, danced and sang and wept at the same time. Grief made a very deep impression on the sadhus and sadhvis, like a heavy sleep on the day-blooming lotuses at the setting of the sun.
Then Purandara placed the Master's body on the pyre, his heart torn by grief as if a spike had entered. The Agnikumāras created a fire on the pyre; the Vayukumāras created a wind that made it burn. Other gods threw fragrant incense and pitchers of ghi and honey by the hundred on the burning pyre. When the flesh, et cetera had been consumed, the Stanita-gods at once extinguished the pyre with water from the Ocean of Milk. Sakra and Iśāna took the Lord's right and left upper eye-teeth; Camara and Bali took the lower eyeteeth. Other Indras and the gods took the Lord's other teeth and bones; and men, longing for good fortune, took the ashes of the pyre. On the place of the pyre the gods made the best jeweled mound, the abode of the wealth of good fortune. After they had held the Lord's emancipation-festival in this way, the gods went to Nandiśvara and held an eightday festival to the eternal Arhats. When they had gone to heaven, the gods put the Master's eye-teeth in round diamond boxes on top of pillars named Māṇava inside their own palaces.
With thirty years as householder and forty-two years in the vow, the life of Lord Vira was seventy-two years. The
268 258. Two kinds of drums.
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