In Ambagana he had been just eight days earlier; the Sala grove of Bhoganagara he had left to betake himself to Pava, three days before we arrived there.
Early one afternoon, and very tired, we reached the latter place.
The first house that attracted our attention belonged to a coppersmith, as could be seen from the great variety of metal wares ranged along the wall. But no blow of a hammer resounded from it; the inmates seemed to be keeping holiday, and at the well in the courtyard dishes and platters were being washed by the servants as though a marriage had just taken place.
Suddenly a little man in festive garb came forward and begged courteously to be allowed to fill our alms-bowls.
“If you had come a few hours earlier,” he added, “then I should have had two additional welcome and honoured guests, for your Master, the Buddha, with his monks, dined with me today.”
“So the Master is still here in Pava, then?”
“Not any longer, most honoured sister,” answered the coppersmith. “Immediately after the meal the Master was taken with a violent illness and severe pains, which brought him near to fainting, so that we were all greatly frightened. But the Master rallied from the attack and started for Kusinara about an hour ago.”
I should have preferred to go at once, for what the smith said about this attack caused me to anticipate the worst. But it was an imperative necessity to strengthen ourselves not only with food, but by a short interval of rest.
The road from Pava to Kusinara it was not possible to miss. It soon led us away from the cultivated fields, through tiger-grass and undergrowth ever deeper into the jungle. We waded through a little river and refreshed ourselves somewhat by bathing. After a few minutes’ pause we started on again. Evening was approaching, and it was with difficulty that I managed to drag myself farther.
Medini tried to persuade me to spend the night on a little bit of rising ground under a tree. There was no such great hurry.
“This Kusinara is, I expect, not much more than a village, and seems to be quite buried in the jungle. How canst thou imagine that the Master will die here? He will assuredly pass away some time in the Jetavana Park at Sravasti, or in either one of his groves at Rajagriha; but the life of the Master will certainly not go out in this desert. Who has ever heard of Kusinara?”
“It may be that people will hear of Kusinara from this day forward,” I said, and went on.
But my strength was soon so terribly exhausted that I was forced to bring myself to climb the nearest treeless height in the hope of being able to see from it the neighbourhood of Kusinara. Otherwise we should be obliged to spend the night up there where we were less exposed to the attacks of beasts of prey and snakes, and would also be to a certain extent immune from fever-producing vapours.
Arrived at the summit, we looked in vain for some sign of human dwellings. In seemingly endless succession the slopes of the jungle rose before us, like a carpet that is gradually being drawn upward. Soon, however, tall trees emerged from the low undergrowth, the thick leafy masses of a virgin forest rose dome-like one above another, and in a dark glade foamed an unruly brook, the same stream in whose silently flowing waters we had a short time before bathed.
The whole day through, the air had been sultry and the sky overcast. Here, however, we were met by a fresh breeze, and the landscape grew ever clearer as though one veil after another were being lifted before our eyes.
Huge walls of rock towered skyward above the woods, and higher yet like a roof above them were piled green mountain-tops—forest-clad peaks, they must have been, though they looked like so many mossy cushions—and ever higher, till they seemed to disappear in Heaven itself.
One solitary far-stretching cloud of soft red hue—one, and only one—floated above.
Even as we gazed at it this cloud began to glow strangely. It recalled the past when I had seen my father take a piece of purified gold out of the furnace with the pincers and, after cooling, lay it on a background of light-blue silk, for so did this luminous air-picture now shine forth in sharply defined surfaces of burnished gold; while, in between, vaporous strips of bright green deepened and shot downward in fan-shaped patches until, becoming gradually paler, they plunged into the colourless stratum of air beneath, as though desirous of reaching the verdure-clad mountain-tops that lay below. Ever redder grew the golden surfaces, ever greener the shadows.
That was no cloud.
“The Himavat,” whispered Medini, overawed and deeply moved, as her hand tremblingly sought my arm.
Yes, there he rose before us, the mountain of mountains, the place of eternal snows, the abode of the gods, the resting-place of the holy ones! The Himavat—even in childhood this name had filled me with feelings of deep fear and reverence, with a mysterious prescience of the Sublime One! How often had I heard in legends and tales the sentence—“And he betook himself to the Himavat and lived the life of an ascetic there!” Thousands upon thousands had climbed these heights—seekers after salvation—in order amid the loneliness of the mountains to reach eternal happiness by means of their penance—each with his own special delusion; and now He was approaching—the One Being, among them all, free from delusion—He whose footsteps we were following.
As I stood there, lost in thought, the luminous picture was suddenly extinguished, as though heaven had absorbed it into
