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CHAPTER 1
King Prabhasa
[1] None but the noble-hearted make the momentous vow to become a Buddha so as to rescue the world from the hell of repeated existences, that snake pit, which teems with every sort of affliction.
According to tradition there was in the past a capital city called Prabhavati, resplendent as the sky when adorned by the unblemished autumn moon and its host of stars. Parks that were always in bloom graced its outskirts and in between the houses colonnades encrusted with gems and gold enhanced the lanes, the crossings and the markets bustling with an endless throng of people. And in it, like a jewel of immaculate splendor in the necklace of his wife, the entire earth, lived King Prabhasa.
[2] As they adorned themselves, the women in his palace could see their ear-ornaments and the vermilion beauty marks on their foreheads reflected in its walls of pure crystal: their tender hands were spared the trouble of holding up a mirror. [3] His relatives saw him in the role of a cloud, making the seeds of his merit sprout with the water of his gifts, while even his most powerful foes could not withstand his fury that in an instant flashed out like lightning.
One day the king, preeminent in wealth as in prowess, was seated on his throne, both sides of which were inset with thousands of flawless jewels. He looked like the sun resting on the peak of the eastern mountain. A host of Brahmans, neighboring rulers, ministers, and emissaries was seated according to rank, while the doorkeepers barredordinary people who aroused their suspicion. Elephants, horses, and chariots were tethered outside.
As the king surveyed this gathering, some woodsmen turned up and were ushered in. Kneeling on the ground and stammering in awe — such was their natural simplicity — they gabbled out their news: [4] "We've seen an elephant, white as a bed of water lilies, one of a herd, deep in the mountains. He looks like the top of Himalaya when its bottom is hidden by a mass of fresh clouds. Now it is for Your Majesty to decide if he is to be captured."
With the onset of autumn the king felt a growing eagerness to capture the elephant. As he passed the fields that bordered towns and villages, he could hear the roots of nut grass and couch grass crack as the ploughshare tore them up. When the girls guarding the fields clapped their hands and snapped their fingers, parrots flew up in fright and the flapping of their wings shook the awns of the ripe brown rice. Crows nervously hopped close to some ploughmen being waited upon by women, who had brought them their meal. A herd of buffalo cows stood ruminating in the muddy water of a pond and kept the flies from settling by twitching their muzzles. The tinkle of bells shaken by a grazing herd of cows could be heard. Herons, greylags, and pairs of shelduck entangled themselves with the lotus stalks in the paddy fields. A white parasol sheltered the king on his royal chariot from the heat of the sun's rays until at last he entered the mountain forest where the many herds of deer scattered in fright at his retinue, whose horses crushed the grass under their hooves.
[5] From afar the king saw the lord of the elephants standing in the midst of his herd, crushing an incense tree, which gave off a powerful scent. With an occasional flap of his ears he scattered the swarm of bees that hovered near the streaks of must-juice on his temples. "Let us see this lord of elephants do battle with one of our own rutting elephants," thought Prabhasa and said to Samyata, his mahout: "Lift the cloth off the face of our prize elephant and goad him to fight this wild one." "As Your Majesty commands," replied the mahout. By slapping him he first roused the fighting spirit in that elephant, who normally served as a bulwark against enemy troops, then confronted him with his opponent.
At the sight of each other the two elephants grew angry and their flow of must-juice greatly increased: trails of drops sprinkled the dusty ground and made it smell sweet. The clash of their tusks, heavy as door-bars, made a terrifying noise as they fought it out under the eyes of the soldiers, who shouted: "This one's done for," "This one's had it." [6] The blows they exchanged cut their faces. Their bulging eyes were bloodshot. Flapping their differently colored ears, they offset each other like two clouds, white and black. Angrily they held aloft their thick trunks, twitching at the tips, and revealed their palates that looked like pale pink buds. [7] Due to the friction of the white elephant's tusks the iron tusk-sheaths of the king's elephant were flecked with sparks and then came loose. [8] And when the royal elephant was defeated by the white one its mahout hid his face in shame. The lord of the elephants returned to his herd and the king, though he remained inscrutable, was amazed.
His elephant keepers then approached King Prabhasa and said: "Your Majesty, even with the combined strength of all our elephants it would be hard to get the better of this one. But magic herbs should bring him under control." The king gave his approval and returned to the capital, while they used this ploy to bring the must-elephant and its entourage of females into the elephant stable, tied him to a post and reported to the king that they had brought in the elephant. The king then said to Samyata the mahout: "My good fellow, I want you to train this lordly elephant so that I can ride it." Bowing his head, Samyata acknowledged the royal command and began training the elephant. [9] And like an intelligent pupil, the elephant mastered every skill the mahout taught him. [10] Then, leading in the great elephant, who robbed other elephants of their ardor and pride, the mahout bowed his head, politely folded his hands and said to the king: [11] "My lord, the elephant is tame and will prove a formidable bulwark against foreign kings. Now that he is fully trained not even must will lead him astray. [12] No need for hook or cane, no need even for a rider: he will remain steady. If I pressed him to do so, this elephant would swallow flaming hot balls of iron. [13] So, mount this rutting elephant that looks like Himalaya and try him out. Surely a connoisseur of gems, his curiosity once aroused, must judge them for himself?"
Then, like the sun surmounting a white autumn cloud, Prabhasa mounted the elephant and, attended by the ladies of the palace, set out to divert himself in his pleasure grounds. [14] As he ambled along, the lord of the elephants caught sight of a she-elephant gracefully dowsing herself in a pond, crushing a lotus stalk whose shreds looked like bright fetters, and brushing a full-blown lotus with the tip of her trunk. [15] At the sight of that she-elephant, deep in the midst of those lotuses, the elephant lord was smitten to the core by the arrow of love. Though the mahout tried to restrain him with harsh, staccato shouts, he only ran the faster, while the startled she-elephant moved away. [16] As he pursued the fleeing she-elephant, leaving a white track in his wake, the king's retainers, galloping behind, could hardly see him, like people on shore peering at a ship driven before the wind.
[17] "Never before have you driven us away. What do you mean by such cruelty?" Seeming thus to bemoan, a flight of bees followed in his path for a while. [18] Though he lacerated the two domes on the elephant's forehead with lashes of his hook, the mahout could not hold it back. If his mind is blinded and besotted by passion, even a human being cannot be restrained, much less an animal.
Overcome with desire, the elephant, taking no notice of the blows of the hook, reached open country to which the she-elephant in her fright had hastily retreated. The king was still mounted on him, but blood was streaming from wounds to his thighs, shanks, arms, and chest from the thorny braches of vanga trees that had hit and slashed him.
Here the mountain gorges were murky with the smoke of forest fires and drab as a buffalo's horn. The ground was very rough and in places littered with the shells of eggs that had fallen and smashed when birds' nests were dislodged from the tops of trees uprooted by elephants. Vultures, crows, and jackals alighted on the scraps of flesh left on the carcasses of deer after tigers had eaten their fill. The shrill chirping of crickets made the place eerie and the sun's rays scorched the waste of stone on the mountain heights. Altogether it was as unpleasant as keeping bad company.
[19] In the trees monkeys, their pink faces the color of ripe figs, momentarily stopped still in surprise at the sound of bells and saw the elephant, which had shaken off the hook, leaving that spot, dark with kusa grass. Deer, with their mouths full of grass, raised their heads and also caught a glimpse of it.
Then the mahout said to the king: "Your Majesty, now that I'm without the hook, this elephant is completely unmanageable, like a wicked person who has lost all shame. Should this vicious beast by any chance pass under a tree, Your Majesty should hang onto a branch and get a purchase there." The king's diadem, armband, necklace, and shawl had all fallen off, but he did not despair of saving himself. Just as one tightly embraces one's beloved, who is all eager after long separation, so he managed to grasp the branch of a fig tree, whose fruit, relished by parrots, resembled a woman's vermilion-painted lips. And there he remained on a bough of that great tree.
[20] The tips of branches disarranged the chowries on the elephant's ears as he went along. Once he was out of sight he was too far away for the king to hear the shrill jangle of his bells.
Meanwhile the king's women entered the palace, their eyes brimming with tears. Distressed about their lord, they dropped to the ground and indulged in a long lament: [21] "He has fallen down some ravine scarred with scree and blocked with boulders. Unarmed as he is, how will the king get back from that frightful forest? [22] His shoulders and arms must be broken and limp after such a fall, or else he is weak with a raging thirst. How will he reach the water he yearns for when the needle-sharp kusa grass pricks the soft soles of his feet? [23] How can an elephant have got him into such an unimaginable situation when he has his men as escort? And yet who can sidestep the paths of Fate, the giver of good and ill? [24] If something awful has happened to the king, we would certainly wish to die as well. A herd of she-elephants can take no pleasure in a mountain forest once a lion has killed its leader. [25] Pray God the mahout comes and tells us that our sovereign is alive. How we long to see the king again in all his glory, with that charming smile on his moonlike face."
Tears washed away the lines of musk painted on their cheeks, as the king's wives gave themselves up to this lament. His ministers tried to comfort them, then got into their palanquins and slowly moved off in a cavalcade. They followed the track where the turf and clods of earth had been crushed underfoot by the elephant and where the fresh grass at its edge was scented with scattered drops of must-juice over which a swarm of bees was hovering. [26] Then, by a hill, the king's men noticed a necklace. Its many threads had tangled and finally snapped, so that the large central gem had fallen off and the soft grass was covered with strings of pearls, pale from rubbing against each other. In brightness they completely outshone the gleaming snakes, now roused from their torpor.
Catching sight of the necklace, the ministers felt sure the king must be nearby, and going a little further on, they caught sight of him under the fig tree. His body was weak and pale with thirst, his topknot tousled, and he was suffering pain from being slashed by those branches with their extremely sharp thorns. They were overjoyed and, getting down from their palanquins and horses, approached him as respectfully as the gods did Indra when he emerged from the hollow lotus stalk. The king then told them all that had happened to him and the ministers in their glee lifted him like Rama onto his royal chariot and led him away from that wild region back to his city.
On his return to the capital, Prabhavati, the citizens were so delighted that they organized a festival with elaborate dances. To archways they tied sweet-smelling garlands of various flowers, on which bees began to settle; they hoisted flags and banners and scented the streets with fragrant water. And as to the elephant, having satisfied his desire with the she-elephant in a display of playfulness worthy of the intoxicated Balarama, he was once again brought into the king's presence by the mahout, now overcome with fear and embarrassment.
[27] On seeing the mahout tremble with fear, the king's eyes instantly grew red as a full-blown red lotus. An eclipse of wrath darkened the king's moonlike face as he addressed him: "You wretched, worthless mahout, did someone put you up to mounting me on this vicious, untamed elephant? Did you not declare that at your command this splendid elephant would swallow even red-hot balls of iron? Let us now see if you were right." [28] And from a fire that resembled the rising sun he raked out some iron balls and placed them before the elephant. [29] Then, in the midst of his trembling ministers, he said to the mahout: "Dismount and feed the elephant these blazing hot iron balls." [30] Obediently the mahout held his cane in front of him and said to the elephant: "Take!" And it did not disobey. [31] At the sight of the elephant ready to take hold of an iron ball, the king said to Samyata: "Stop it!" [32] The mahout restrained the elephant and the king spoke again: "Clearly one can curb his body, but not his capricious temperament."
Thereupon a god of the Pure Abode, up in the sky, thought: "If this king were to hear about the blessed Buddhas' vast array of virtues, he would without doubt vow to become a Buddha himself. Now might be the moment for me to enter the body of this mahout," and in a trice he did so.
Then Samyata said to the king: [33] "Even holy men, who make their bodies lean with austerity and who eat only fruit, are perturbed by love. If even they cannot control their thoughts, how could anyone else do so?" "Is there then anyone capable of controlling his thoughts?" asked the king, and Samyata answered: [34] "Those lords of creation, past and future, called Buddhas — they indeed are capable of controlling their own and others' thoughts."
[35] The moment the king heard the mahout pronounce the word "Buddha" his good intentions seemed to multiply and his hair bristled. "Tell me then, my good man, what powers do the Buddhas possess." Samyata replied: [36] "The Tathagatas have realized that state of serenity which they need to realize if they are to prevent those people being reborn, who stray blindly in the darkness of delusion." Overjoyed, the king pressed him: "Please tell me, then, how does one reach the state of being a Buddha?" Samyata answered: [37] "Men noted for generosity, morality, forbearance, valor, meditation, and understanding, so long as they make a real effort, attain to the state of a Buddha."
Now that he had discovered the path that leads to becoming a Buddha, the king made the following vow: [38] "Possessed of many virtues — generosity and the rest of them — may I quickly become a Buddha, adept in what needs to be known in order to bring peace to people."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Once A Peacock, Once An Actress"
by .
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