Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 21.djvu/196

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148
SADDHARMA-PUNDARÎKA.
vi.

with flowers, incense, perfumed wreaths, ointments, powder, robes, umbrellas, banners, flags, triumphal streamers. Afterwards he shall again pay a similar homage to twenty kotis of Buddhas; show them respect, honour, reverence, veneration, and worship. Then in his last bodily existence[1], his last corporeal appearance, he shall be a Tathâgata in the world, an Arhat, &c. &c, named Gâmbûnada-prabhâsa (i.e. gold-shine), endowed with science and conduct, &c. His Buddha-field will be thoroughly pure, even, nice, pretty, beautiful, crystalline, variegated with jewel-trees, interlaced with gold threads, strewed with flowers, free from beings of the brute creation, hell, and the host of demons, replete with numerous men and gods, adorned with many hundred thousand disciples and many hundred thousand Bodhisattvas. The measure of his lifetime shall be twelve intermediate kalpas; his true law shall continue twenty intermediate kalpas and its counterfeit as many.

And on that occasion the Lord uttered the following stanzas:

25. Listen all to me, ye monks, since I am going to utter an infallible word[2]. Kâtyâyana here, the senior, my disciple, shall render worship to the Leaders.

26. He shall show veneration of various kinds and in many ways to the Leaders, after whose


    rainbow colours, I think—the interpretation either of  lohitamukti  or of  musaragalva  must be wrong, perhaps both are false.

  1. Properly, western elevation or rise.
  2. The Buddha may in sober truth say so, because the astronomer can predict future risings and settings. He here shows himself to be Brahma, in his function of the first of astronomers, to whom the ancient Brahma-Siddhânta is referred.