Part 4: Candraprabha’s childhood

After he had recited this hymn of praise, Purandara took the Lord from Īśāna, carried him, and put him down by Queen Lakṣmaṇā’s side according to rule. Then King Mahāsena made a great festival. The birth of an Arhat is cause for a festival elsewhere; how much more in the house (where it occurs). Because his mother had a pregnancy-whim for drinking the moon, while he was still in embryo, and because he was moon-color, his father named him Candraprabha.

In childhood the Lord’s figure shone as if he were in Vaijayanta, beautiful with a halo of a flood of light fair as moonlight. Day by day the Supreme Lord grew, pulling at the hands of his nurses like a young elephant at the shoots of creepers. The Lord, though he had the three kinds of knowledge, experienced childhood like an ignorant person, as if it, which had not been attained even in his birth as a god, had been attained by his own desire. The Lord traversed childhood with the assistance of various and numerous sports, like a traveler traversing a road with the assistance of charming stories.