Now King Suddhodhana was so afraid of losing his son to a hermit’s life, that he had placed a thousand men to guard each city gate. Each gate was impassable, high and strong and spiked. A single man would never be able to swing it open. And even if it could, the noise alone would have woken the guards. If the guards awoke, the prince would be taken right back. I don’t think the prince realised until this moment how difficult getting away really was.

“Listen!” he said to me in a low voice. “I am going to jump over the wall. Kanthaka will be able to do it. You stay behind. Goodbye!”

He was just about to whisper an order into his faithful Kanthaka’s ear, when softly, silently, the massive gates began to open. No one stood behind them. My jaw dropped. It must have been the devas at work, their strong invisible hands pulling open the gates so my prince could go where he must.

But one more obstacle remained. Mara, the tempter, appeared before us and said, “Prince Siddhartha! Stop! Do not leave this way, like a thief in the night. It is not befitting of a king! In seven days, the treasure-wheel will appear and make you sovereign of the four continents and the two thousands islands in between. Stay! Stay and enjoy what is your due!”

Mara was very clever indeed, hoping to appeal to the young man’s sense of pride and ambition! But my prince was not so easily swayed. He ignored Mara and continued riding.

This riled Mara no end. “No one ignores Mara!” he snarled. “I will not let go so easily. Wherever you go, I will follow like a shadow, and whenever an angry or an evil thought crosses your mind, I will show myself and tempt you!” Saying this, he darted behind us, a dark shape full of evil and hate.

It took me a while to shake off the unpleasant sensation that Mara had caused. Only then did I realise what a beautiful full-moon night it was. As my prince rode away from the city of his birth, his boyhood and his youth, he felt a strong urge to look back at it once more. But before he could reign Kanthaka to a halt, the earth’s movement itself halted, so that the Buddha-to-be could gaze at the city that was no longer his. He gazed for what seemed an endless moment.

“Isn’t it strange, Channa?” he said, when we were riding again. “I thought I would be sad but I am not.”

In the space of that one night, we passed through three kingdoms. At last, after thirty leagues, we reached the banks of the river Anoma. The prince pressed Kanthaka gently with his heel, and the horse sprang across the wide river in one leap and landed softly on the opposite bank.

The sand was gleaming like silver. It stretched endlessly on either side of us as we stood. The prince got down and said, “This is where we must part ways, Channa. Take my ornaments and Kanthaka, and go back to Kapilavastu.”

I am not ashamed to say it. I wept. I had come this far with my prince, I wanted to go even further. “Let me renounce the world too, Master,” I said to him. “Let me follow you everywhere, and be your servant.”

But he would not have it. One by one, he took off his princely ornaments and his fine-spun robes. Now only his long plaited hair remained, with the crown prince’s diadem on his brow. “These too must go!” he said and with his sword cut off his locks. Head shaven, clad in a rough robe, my prince was ready to say goodbye.

Kanthaka, who was as sensitive a creature as any man, could not bear the thought of being parted from his master. Before my eyes, he breathed his last.

My sorrow doubled. Now I would have to return alone to the city. I would have to tell the king of his son’s departure and suffer the punishment for having let him go. I did not regret what I had done.

I touched his feet and he blessed me. And then he walked away, into a mango grove, to meditate.

My prince gave up the earth, but in doing so, he won it. His long journey to Enlightenment began that night, but that was one journey he would have to make alone.

The End

Extracted from The Greatest Stories Ever Told;
By Sampurna Chattarji; Publisher: Puffin

Illustration: Uday Deb