[Footnote:  The mystic formula of the Buddhists, read backwards.]

The anger and amazement of the Brahmins may be conceived when, on returning equipped with fresh implements of flagellation, they discovered the salubrious condition of their victim.  Their scourges would probably have undergone conversion into halters, had they not been accompanied by a royal officer, who took the really triumphant martyr under his protection, and carried him off to the palace.  He was speedily conducted to the young prince’s couch, whither a vast crowd attended him.  The hour of noon not having yet arrived, Ananda discreetly protracted the time by a seasonable discourse on the impossibility of miracles, those only excepted which should be wrought by the professors of the faith of Buddha.  He then descended from his pulpit, and precisely as the sun attained the zenith laid his hand upon the bosom of the young prince, who instantly revived, and completed a sentence touching the game of dice which had been interrupted by his catalepsy.

The people shouted, the courtiers went into ecstasies, the countenances of the Brahmins assumed an exceedingly sheepish expression.  Even the king seemed impressed, and craved to be more particularly instructed in the law of Buddha.  In complying with this request, Ananda, who had made marvellous progress in worldly wisdom during the last twenty-four hours, deemed it needless to dilate on the cardinal doctrines of his master, the misery of existence, the need of redemption, the path to felicity, the prohibition to shed blood.  He simply stated that the priests of Buddha were bound to perpetual poverty, and that under the new dispensation all ecclesiastical property would accrue to the temporal authorities.

“By the holy cow!” exclaimed the monarch, “this is something like a religion!”

The words were scarcely out of the royal lips ere the courtiers professed themselves converts.  The multitude followed their example.  The Brahminical church was promptly disestablished and disendowed, and more injustice was committed in the name of the new and purified religion in one day than the old corrupt one had occasioned in a hundred years.

Ananda had the satisfaction of feeling able to forgive his adversaries, and of valuing himself accordingly; and to complete his felicity, he was received in the palace, and entrusted with the education of the king’s son, which he strove to conduct agreeably to the precepts of Buddha.  This was a task of some delicacy, as it involved interference with the princely youth’s favourite amusement, which had previously consisted in torturing small reptiles.

After a short interval Ananda was again summoned to the monarch’s presence.  He found his majesty in the company of two most ferocious ruffians, one of whom bore a huge axe, and the other an enormous pair of pincers.

“My chief executioner and my chief tormentor,” said the king.