Long ages ago there lived a mighty king called Ardschi-Bordschi (1).
In the neighbourhood of his residence was a hill where the boys who
were tending the calves were wont to pass away the time by racing
up and down. But they had also another custom, and it was, that
whichever of them won the race was king for the day--an ordinary game
enough, only that when it was played in this place the Boy-king thus
constituted was at once endowed with such extraordinary importance
and majesty that every one was constrained to treat him as a real
king. He had not only ministers and dignitaries among his playfellows,
who prostrated themselves before him and fulfilled all his behests,
but whoever passed that way could not choose but pay him homage also.
At last the report of the matter filled all the land, and came also
to the ears of the King himself.
Ardschi-Bordschi had the whole matter exposed before him, and he
inquired into all the manners and ways of the boys; then he said,--
"If this thing happened every day to one and the same boy, then would
I acknowledge in him a Bodhisattva (2); but as every day a different
boy may win the race, and it would seem that whichever of them is
called king is clothed with equal majesty, it appears manifestly to
me that the virtue is not in the boy, but in the hill of which he
makes his throne."
Nevertheless the matter troubled the King, and he desired above all
things to obtain some certain knowledge concerning it, not seeing
how to search it out.