Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 21.djvu/55

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i.
INTRODUCTORY.
7

removed, trembled, trembled from one end to the other, tossed, tossed along.

Then did those who were assembled and sitting together in that congregation, monks, nuns, male and female lay devotees, gods, N&gas, goblins, Gandharvas, demons, Garudas, Kinnaras, great serpents, men, and beings not human, as well as governors of a region, rulers of armies and rulers of four continents, all of them with their followers, gaze on the Lord in astonishment, in amazement, in ecstasy.

And at that moment there issued a ray from within the circle of hair between the eyebrows of the Lord[1]. It extended over eighteen hundred thousand Buddha-fields in the eastern quarter, so that all those Buddha-fields appeared wholly illuminated by its radiance, down to the great hell Avki and up to the limit of existence. And the beings in any of the six states[2] of existence became visible, all without exception. Likewise the Lords Buddhas staying, living, and existing in those Buddha-fields became all visible, and the law preached by them could be entirely heard by all beings. And the monks, nuns, lay devotees male and female, Yogins and students of Yoga, those who had obtained the fruition (of the Paths of sanctification) and those who had not, they, too, became visible. And the Bodhisattvas Mahfisattvas in those


  1. This reminds one of Wordsworth's lines:

    'Bright apparition suddenly put forth
     The Rainbow, smiling on the faded storm;
     The mild assemblage of the starry heavens;
     And the great Sun, earth's universal Lord.'

  2. Viz. hell, the brute creation, the world of ghosts, of demons, of men, and of gods or angels.