"Did he discourse to you, and did you approve of what he said?"
"He discoursed on moral duties, and what he said was very proper."
"You know what we call the Ten Virtues.[7] Do you approve of them?"
"What length of time, according to your books, is a Kamba?" (A complete revolution of nature, a geological period, it might almost be called.)
"Our books, your Majesty, do not contain that."
"Well, we say that in a Kamba the life period of man gradually advances from the limit of ten years to an Athenkhya,[8] and then gradually diminishes from that down to ten years again. When that has been repeated sixty-four times it constitutes a period, which again is repeated sixty-four times; and when four such compound periods have been repeated, the whole era is called a Kamba, or a grand revolution of the universe. The world is then destroyed, and a new era commences."
The King then entered into a long discourse on the history of the Mahan-Zat, or life of Guadma in one of his former births, the gist of which was that a king who had a wise minister could get anything he set his heart upon. After which he related the story of a king of Benares, who had three birds' eggs brought to him; one produced a parrot, one an owl, and the other a _mainah_; and to each of these, in course of time, a department of the state was intrusted, but the highest, politics, fell to the parrot.
"I believe," to the Envoy, ironically, "your English kings have existed for two hundred years or more. Have they not?"
"The English nation, your Majesty, have had kings to reign over them for fifteen hundred years."
"_My_ ancestors have come in regular descent from King Mahatha-mada" (the first king who established government on the earth,--many millions of years ago, at the beginning of the present Kamba, in fact).
_Envoy_ (to one of the Atwen-woons, to show that he knew that no such king had ever reigned in Burmah). "Which of the royal cities did Mahatha-mada build?"
"O," said the quick-witted Woondouk, "that king reigned in Myit-tshe-ma-detha [_the Middle land_, India]."
_King._ "Our race once reigned in all the countries you hold. Now the Kalás have come close up to us."
_Envoy._ "It is very true, your Majesty."
"Have you read any part of our Maha-Radza-Weng [_Chronicles of the Kings_]?"