[5] "Your elephant, an excellent mount, caparisoned with many kinds of gems,
splendid, mighty, endowed with speed, courses through the sky;
decked with lotuses, with eyes like lotus petals,
bearing the radiance of lotuses and water-lilies,
its limbs besprinkled with lotus pollen,
wearing garlands of golden lotuses;
along a path strewn with lotuses, adorned with lotus petals,
the elephant goes steadily, gracefully, without jolting, at a measured pace.
As it strides along, there are golden bells of delightful tone;
their sound is heard like the fivefold instrumental music.
Seated on that elephant's shoulders, clad in spotless garments, adorned,
you outshine in beauty the great host of celestial nymphs (accharā).
Is this the fruit of your giving (dāna), or else of virtue (sīla),
or of an act of reverential salutation (añjalikamma)?
Being asked, declare that to me."
That deity (devatā), elated, questioned by Moggallāna,
when asked the question explained of what deed (kamma) this was the fruit:
"Having seen one endowed with good qualities — a meditator, delighting in jhāna, mindful (sata) —
I gave him a seat strewn with flowers and spread with cloth;
half a garland of lotuses I scattered, with its petals, all around the seat,
devout at heart, with my own hands.
Of that wholesome deed such is this fruit for me:
honour and reverence — and I am esteemed by the devas.
Whoever indeed, with devout heart, should give a seat
to the rightly released, the peaceful, those who live the holy life,
he will rejoice even as I.
Therefore one who loves himself, aspiring to greatness,
should give a seat to those who bear their final body."
The Elephant Mansion (Kuñjaravimāna), the fifth.
English translation from the Pali (Siam Raṭṭha edition) — under review, not for citation.