Since that day full fifty years had passed away, and in the interval he had changed not alone the course of his own life, but also that of the world. How vast the difference between that past, when he dwelt in yonder cave and sat beneath the Sattapanni tree, and the present! Then he was yet a seeker—one struggling for salvation. Terrible spiritual contests lay before him—yearlong, self-inflicted mortifications, inhuman agonies, frightful as fruitless, the mere recital of which made the flesh of even the stoutest-hearted of his hearers creep; till at length, risen triumphant above all such self-torturing asceticism, through fervent meditation, he reached the light, and went forth from the conflict, consecrated to the salvation of all created beings, filled with a divine pity, a supreme and perfect Buddha. Those were the years in which his life resembled a changeful morning in the rainy season—dazzling sunshine alternating with deepest gloom, the while the monsoon piles cloud above cloud in towering masses, and the death-laden thunderstorm comes growling nearer. But now his life was filled with the same calm, sunny peace that lay upon the evening landscape, a peace that seemed to grow ever deeper and clearer as the sun’s disc dipped towards the horizon.
For him, too, sunset, the close of life’s long day, was at hand. He had finished his work. The kingdom of truth had been established on sure foundations, and the doctrine of salvation proclaimed to all mankind; while many monks and nuns of blameless life and approved knowledge, and lay followers of both sexes, were now well fitted to guard his kingdom and to uphold and spread its doctrines.
And even as he stands there, there abides in his heart, as a result of the meditations of this day spent in solitary journeying, the inalienable knowledge: “For thee, the time cometh, and that soon, when thou shalt go hence and leave this world, from which thou hast redeemed thyself and all who come after thee, and shalt enter into the rest of Nirvana.”
And looking over the land spread out before him, with a happy recognition, in which there lay, nevertheless, a deep note of sadness, he bade these loved objects farewell.
“Fair indeed art thou, Rajagriha, City of the Five Hills! Beautiful are thy environs, richly blessed thy fields, heart-gladdening thy wooded glades gleaming with waters, very pleasant thy clustering hills of rock! For the last time do I behold thy lovely borders from this, the fairest of all places whence thy children love to look upon thee. But once, and once only—on the day when I go hence and look back from the crest of yonder mountain-ridge—shall I see thee again, beloved valley of Rajagriha; then, nevermore!”
And still the Master stood, till at length only two structures, of all in the city before him, towered golden in the sunlight: one, the highest tower in the king’s palace, whence Bimbisara had first espied him, when, a young and unknown ascetic, he passed that way, and, by his noble bearing, drew upon himself the notice of the Magadha king; the other, the dome-like superstructure of the Indian temple, in which, in the years before his teaching had delivered mankind from bloody superstition, thousands upon thousands of innocent animals were yearly slaughtered in honour of the Deity. Finally, even the pinnacles of the towers slipped down into the rising sea of shadow and were lost to view, and only the cone of golden umbrellas1 which, rising one above another, crowned the dome of the temple yet glowed, suspended as it were in midair, a veritable symbol of the “royal city,”2 flashing and sparkling as the red glow deepened against the dark-blue background of the lofty treetops. At this point the Master caught sight of the still somewhat distant goal of his journey. For the treetops he saw were those of the mango grove on the farther side of the town, the gift of his disciple Jivaka, the king’s physician, in which a stately monastery provided the monks with quarters at once healthy and comfortable.
To this home of the Order, the Lord Buddha had sent the monks who accompanied him—about 200 in number—on before, under the leadership of his cousin and faithful companion Ananda, because he felt desirous of tasting the deep delight of a day’s solitary pilgrimage. And he was aware that a band of young monks from the West, led by his great disciple the wise Sariputta, would arrive in the mango grove at sunset. In his vivid imagination, given to picturing events in all their details, he went over the scenes that would be enacted. He saw the new arrivals exchange friendly greetings with the brethren already there, saw them conducted by the latter to seats and night quarters, their cloaks and alms-bowls taken from them, and heard all this take place with much noise and loud shouting, as though fisher-folk were quarrelling over their spoils. He knew this to be no exaggeration; and to him, who loved silent meditation, and disliked clamour as does the solitary lion in the jungle, the thought of being involved, just at this moment, in such bustle, after the delicious restfulness of solitary travel and the blessed peace of the evening landscape, was doubly distressing.
So he determined, as he went on his way, that he would not go through the city to his mango grove, but would take up his abode for the night in any house in the nearest suburb in which he could find shelter.
Meantime the flaming gold of the western heavens had died down in burning orange tints, and these, in turn, had melted into a blaze of the fieriest scarlet. Round about him the green of the fields deepened and grew more and more luminous, as though the earth were an emerald lit up from within. But already a dreamy violet haze enveloped the horizon, while a weird purple flood—whether light or shadow,
