Part 13: Birth of Acala

One day Subala’s jīva fell from the Anuttaravimāna and descended into the chief-queen’s womb. Sleeping comfortably, she saw four great dreams, which indicate the birth of a Bala, at the last moment of the night. Since sleep had gone far away as if defeated by great joy, the queen told the king at that very time:

“I saw an elephant, four-tusked, resembling a crystal mountain, entering my own mouth like the moon entering a cloud; a bull, high-humped, bellowing, straight-tailed, of spotless color, produced by weaving autumn-clouds, as it were; a moon with its rays streaming forth a great distance as if making ear-ornaments for the quarters; and then a pond filled with full-blown lotuses with sweetly humming bees, just as if it had become one hundred-mouthed and were singing. Master, what is the fruit of these dreams? Tell me. For ordinary people are not suitable to ask about the best dream.”

The king said, “Queen, your son will be a Balabhadra with extradrdinary strength, like a god in beauty.”

In course of time she bore a son, white in color, long-armed, eighty bows tall, like the east bearing the moon. The king held a great festival because a jewel of a son had come, like the Cakravartin when the cakra-jewel came. On an auspicious day at an auspicious moon the king named his son Acala with great pomp. Day by day displaying more and more beauty of the body, he grew through the care of the nurses like a tree by means of canals.