Note 298 — Chapter II · SĪLAVAGGA.

This solemn appeal to a former good action, if it be true, is often represented as working a miracle, and is called saccakiriyā, i.e. “truth-act.” Childers properly compares 2 Kings i. 10: “If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven and consumed him and his fifty.” But the miracle, said in the Buddhist scriptures to follow on an appeal of this kind, is usually, as in this case, an assistance to some one in distress. On the Perfections, see above, pp. 54 to 58.