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THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA. IV, 1, 46.
46. Now there is no other cause, O king, for the attainment of the four Noble Truths. It is only by means of an Act of Truth that they are attained. In the land of China, O king, there is a king of China, who when he wants to charm the great ocean, performs at intervals of four months a solemn Act of Truth, and then on his royal chariot drawn by lions, he enters a league's distance into the great ocean. Then in front of the head of his chariot the mighty waves roll back, and when he returns they flow once. more over the spot. But could the ocean be so drawn back by the ordinary bodily power of all gods and men combined ?'
Sir, even the water in a small tank could not be so made to retire, how much less the waters of the great ocean!'
By this know then the force of Truth. There is no place to which it does not reach.'
47. When Asoka the righteous ruler, O king, as he stood one day at the city of Påtaliputta in the midst of the townsfolk and the country people, of his officers and his servants, and his ministers of state, beheld the Ganges river as it rolled along filled up by freshets from the hills, full to the brim and overflowing—that mighty stream five hundred leagues in length, and a league in breadth-he said to his officers : “Is there any one, my good friends, who is able to make this great Ganges flow backwards and up stream ? " ""Nay, Sire, impossible," said they.
Now a certain courtesan, Bindumati by name, was in the crowd there at the river side, [122] and she heard people repeat the question that the king had asked. Then she said to herself: “Here am I, a
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