Note 12 — Chapter LXXII

The next morning a king, named Śekharajyoti, a pupil of that hermit’s, who had come to have an interview with him, saw him in that state. Then, being tortured with sorrow for his spiritual guide,12 he questioned him, and found out the state of the case, and had a search made for those robbers, and had them brought to that very spot. And he was about to have them put to death, when the hermit said to him; “King, if you put them to death, I will kill myself. If the sword did this work on me, how are they in fault? And if they put the sword in motion, anger put them in motion, and their anger was excited by the loss of their gold, and that was due to my sins in a previous state of existence, and that was due to my ignorance, so my ignorance is the only thing that has injured me. So my ignorance should be slain by me. Moreover, even if these men deserved to be put to death for doing me an injury, ought not their lives to be saved on account of their having done me a benefit? For if they had not done to me what they have done, there would have been no one with regard to whom I could have practised patience, of which the fruit is emancipation? So they have done me a thorough benefit.” With many speeches of this kind did the patient hermit instruct the king, and so he delivered the robbers from punishment. And on account of the excellence of his asceticism his body immediately became unmutilated as before, and that moment he attained emancipation.