Note 52 — INTRODUCTION.

In the Nidānakathā or “The Three Epochs” (translated in Mr. Rhys Davids’s “Buddhist Birth-Stories,” p. 33), there is an account of the great generosity of Mangala Buddha. “The story is, that when he was performing the duties of a Bodhisatta, being in an existence corresponding to the Vessentara existence,52 he dwelt with his wife and children on a mountain.” One day a demon named “Sharp-fang,” hearing of his readiness to bestow gifts, “approached him in the guise of a Brahmin, and asked the Bodhisatta for his two children. The Bodhisatta, exclaiming, “I give my children to the Brahmin,” cheerfully and joyfully gave up both the children, thereby causing the ocean-girt earth to quake. The demon, standing by the bench at the end of the cloistered walk, while the Bodhisatta looked on, devoured the children like a bunch of roots. Not a particle of sorrow arose in the Bodhisatta as he looked on the demon, and saw his mouth as soon as he opened it disgorging streams of blood like flames of fire; nay, a great joy and satisfaction welled within him as he thought, ‘My gift was well given,’ and he put up the prayer, ‘By the merit of this deed may rays of light one day issue from me in this very way.’ In consequence of this prayer of his it was that the rays emitted from his body when he became Buddha filled so vast a sphere.” Another strange Indian story about self-sacrifice is that of the Dānava or Titan Namuchi,53 who “did not refuse to give anything to anybody that asked, even if he were his enemy.” Having practised asceticism for ten thousand years “as a drinker of smoke,” he was allowed by Brahmā to become, like Balder, proof against all the ordinary forces of nature. After that he frequently made war against Indra, and often overcame him. When the gods and the Asuras churned the ocean of milk with the mountain Mandara, Namuchi received, as his share in the products of the churning, a horse which had the power of restoring to life, by a sniff, any Asura whom the gods had killed. This gave him great power. At length Indra went to Namuchi and asked for that horse as a gift. Namuchi gave it, and Indra, “as he could not be slain by any other weapon, killed him with foam of the Ganges, in which he had placed a thunderbolt.” However, he was born again as “an Asura composed all of jewels,” and he conquered Indra a hundred times. “Then the gods took counsel together, and came to him, and said to him, ‘By all means give us your body for a human sacrifice.’ When he heard that, he gave them his own body, although they were his enemies: noble men do not turn their backs on a suppliant, but bestow on him even their lives.”