A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s5.98.4

v2.c19.s5.98.4

For example, a frog hears the voice of Buddha who is preaching on the bank of the river, listens, and being trodden on by a shepherd, is literally translated to a better world; for he is immediately reborn as a god in a golden palace in the heaven of the thirty-three gods.³ In this work we also find numerous miracle tales intended to show how saints attain to miraculous and magic powers by meditation. A monk rescues a snake which is fleeing from a bird; he does this by quickly creating a hill, in which the snake disappears. The monk Bakkula is swallowed by a fish, but remains safe and sound, as he is destined to become an Arhat. Sañjīva was in the state of utter absorption, was taken for dead and laid on the pyre, but the flames could not burn him. The nun Uttarā, absorbed in meditation, was not even injured by boiling oil. The snake Nandopananda had wound herself around the mount Meru and stretched her heads up to the second heaven, then the holy Moggallāna came, transformed himself into a still larger snake, wound himself around Nandopananda and crushed her and the mount Meru into the bargain. Chapter 13¹ gives a long and circumstantial account of the ages of the world and the destruction and restoration of the worlds, reminiscent of the Purāṇas, fancies which would scarcely have come from Buddhaghosa's brain, but are most likely faithful reproductions of earlier traditions.