educated creatures, and here thou seest the result. Whereupon the Bodhisattva Praf#&k£l/a questioned Mangusrt, the prince royal, in chanting the following stanzas:
47. O thou blessed one, who from thy wisdom art called the Sage 1 , by whose power is it that thou to-day (or now) hast educated those innumerable beings ? Tell it me upon my question, O thou god amongst men 2 .
48. What law hast thou preached, or what Stitra, in showing the path of enlightenment, so that those who are there with you have conceived the idea of enlightenment ? that, once having gained a safe ford 3 , they have been decisively established in omniscience?
Marigufrt answered: In the bosom of the sea I have expounded the Lotus of the True Law and no other Stitra. Pra^ikA/a said: That Stitra is profound, subtle, difficult to seize; no other Sfitra equals it. Is there any creature able to understand this jewel of a Sfitra or to arrive at supreme, perfect enlightenment ? Mangusrt replied: There is, young man of good family, the daughter of S&gara, the N&ga-king, eight years old, very intelligent, of keen faculties, endowed with prudence in acts of body, speech, and mind, who has caught and kept all the teachings, in substance and form, of the TatMgatas, who has acquired in one moment a thousand meditations and proofs of the essence of all laws 4 . She
Mahibhadra pra^waya* suran&man. I take sftra in the sense of suri, though it is also possible that sura stands for sura, a hero.
Naradeva.
Labdhagithah; I think we have to read labdhag£dh&£, and have translated accordingly.
The reading is uncertain ; sarvadharmasatvasamSdhdnasami-
