"I Would Rather Perish"
The mother relays the prince's proposal to her daughter, expecting joy at such a match. The girl's answer is startling: she would rather die by her own hand than accept it. Her mother, astonished, warns her against resisting a future wheel-turning king — a position, she insists, of the highest honor.
A Mother's Question, and a Daughter's Refusal
「母語女言：『太子今欲求汝為妃，於意云何？』
「女白母言：『若欲使我為彼妃者，當自殞滅。』
「母報女曰：『勿作此言！所以者何？今此太子悉已具足轉輪王相，必為聖主，有玉女寶，汝當爾時不堪給使，此處尊勝，莫生難心。』」
The mother said to her daughter: "The prince now wishes to seek you as his consort; what do you think of this?"
The girl said to her mother: "If you wish to make me his consort, I would rather perish by my own hand."
The mother replied to her, saying: "Do not speak such words! Why is this? This prince is already fully endowed with every mark of a wheel-turning king; he shall surely become a sage-ruler, possessing the treasure of a jeweled maiden as his consort — and you, at that time, would not even be fit to serve as her own attendant. This position is honored and supreme; do not give rise to a mind of resistance."
The girl's refusal is total and immediate, offered before any explanation of her own reasoning — a stark departure from the deference this narrative's own setup, and her mother's own assumptions, would predict. Her mother's counter-argument is entirely worldly: a wheel-turning king's own destiny is already legible in the prince's own marks, and refusing such a match, in her mother's eyes, is simply irrational. The account has not yet revealed why the girl herself refuses; what follows — a buddha attaining awakening only seven days earlier, at a bodhimaṇḍa just outside this very garden — will supply the answer.
Part 155 In Progress
The girl has refused, and her mother has pushed back. Part 156 turns to what lies just outside the garden: a buddha named Supreme Sun-Light, newly awakened seven days before, and a dream that reveals him to the girl directly.
Continue to Part 156 →