A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s6.t4.21

v2.c19.s6.t4.21

and the idea is often drowned in the flood of words. The *numbers* are, however, still more immoderate and extravagant than the words. For instance, there was a Buddha who lived “forty hundred thousand myriads of tens of millions of ages of the world, as many as there are grains of sand in the river Ganges, and after he had attained to complete Nirvāṇa, his true religion still lasted hundreds of thousands of myriads of tens of millions of ages of the world, as many as there are tiny specks of dust in the whole of India, and a copy of the true religion after that, still lasted hundreds of thousands of myriads of tens of millions of ages of the world, as many as there are tiny specks of dust in the four continents,” and there arose consecutively in the world “twenty hundred thousand myriads of tens of millions” of similar Buddhas.[^1) The Buddha is glorified in the most extravagant manner, immoderate both in words and in numbers, especially in the splendid phantasmagoria of Chapter XIV, where, by the magic power of the Buddha, the earth opens and there suddenly appear from all sides many hundreds of thousands of myriads of tens of thousands of Bodhisattvas, each with a retinue as numerous as the sand of sixty Ganges rivers. While these countless Bodhisattvas pay homage to the Buddha, fifty ages of the world pass, during which great silence prevails, but which, by the magic power of the Lord, seem but a single afternoon. The Buddha tells the astonished Maitreya that all these countless Bodhisattvas were his pupils. The glorification of the text itself is equally immoderate and extravagant; for, strange as it is, the text refers at every turn to Buddha’s preaching and expounding of the text, and to its propagation by the preachers. Thus (in Chapter XI) Śākyamuni causes a wonderful Stūpa to appear in mid-air, and from the interior of the Stūpa sounds the voice of a Buddha, who had died