MIRACLE WATER

Miracle Water

I am reading The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, a narrative of Xuanzang's nineteen-year journey from Chang'an to India between 626 and 645. When he stayed in Taxila, near the present Islamabad, Pakistan, he heard the following folk tale:

King Ashoka and his Queen had a son named Kunala, who was noble and charitable. When the queen died, the king remarried a woman, who was selfish, unwise, and prurient. She hated Kunala. She contrived a plot and said to the king:

“Taxila is an important province for the country. A reliable man should govern it. Kunala is famed for his courage and virtue. No other man except him is suitable for the position. I suggest that you send him there.

Not knowing her scheme, the king consented to her. He summoned Kunala and said,

“My son, I have inherited my ancestor’s land. My source of anxiety is to lose it. To my disappointment, riots sometimes occur in Taxila. So, I order you to keep them down and govern the area. When I issue my orders, I will put my teeth marks on them. So examine the marks for verification. Since the marks are my teeth, there can’t be a fake.”

  Kunala went to Taxila and ruled it. Years passed, but his stepmother still hated Kunala. She again schemed a conspiracy. She forged a fake decree which accused Kunala, sealed it with earthenware, and pushed the king’s teeth into it while he was sleeping.

poison into

the king’s ear

Hamlet

  The letter reached Taxila. When Kunala’s aides read the letter, he turned sorrowful. Kunala asked what the trouble was. The aide answered:

“The letter orders you to gouge out your eyes, leave the castle, and live in the mountains. I doubt the letter’s authenticity. I beseech you to send someone to confirm it. It will not be too late to obey your father after the confirmation.”

   Kunala said, “The letter is sealed with his teeth marks. So, this is genuine. I can’t reject his order.” He ordered his man to gouge out his eyes.

Shi Huangdi’s

fake decree

his son commits suicide

   Years passed. Kunala and his wife lived a life of a beggar and roamed about the world. One cold day, they reached the palace, dizzy with hunger. His wife said, “Here is the palace. Once you were a prince and now a beggar. Why not offer an apology to the king?”

   They sneaked their way into the king’s stable. During the night, Kunala sang a song, so sorrowful and tearful, accompanied by his wife’s harp. The wind conveyed the song to the king, who happened to be strolling in a castle tower. It sounded so lamentable that he said to himself, mystified, “How strange! The song sounds like my son’s, and the harp sounds like my daughter-in-law’s. Why are they here?”

   Soon his men found and took them to the king. At the sight of his eyeless son, the king asked, sorrow-stricken,

“Why? Who on earth has hurt you? How can I see my people’s suffering if I cannot see my son’s? Oh, heaven, I regret I have lost good judgment.”

  Kunala apologized in tears, “Heaven has punished me because I have been an ungrateful child. I received your order on such and such day. I did not protest but obeyed you.”

   The king found out his second wife’s conspiracy and executed her.

execution

self-satisfaction

no restoration

There lived a great Buddhist monk named Gosha. King Ashoka took Kunala to the monk, told how his son became blind, and asked him to restore his sight. Gosha listened to him and made an announcement to the public, “I am going to give a sermon tomorrow. So, everyone, come to the temple with a bowl.”

   The next day, men and women, young and old, gathered at the temple, a bowl in their hands. The priest talked about The Twelve Karma. Everyone wailed and shed tears in the bowl. After preaching, the priest gathered all the tears into one bowl and said to Kunala, “If my teaching is right, the tears will cure your blindness.”

   Kunala washed his eyes with the tears and, strange to say, his eyesight recovered.

 miracle in Buddhism

 Lourdes’s spring

  miracle in Christianity