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Accordingly he laid aside the
title of king and aimed at making himself a god. With this view, and
in imitation of Buddha, who, before being advanced to the rank of a
divinity, had quitted his royal palace and seraglio and retired from
the world, Badonsachen withdrew from his palace to an immense
pagoda, the largest in the empire, which he had been engaged in
constructing for many years. Here he held conferences with the most
learned monks, in which he sought to persuade them that the five
thousand years assigned for the observance of the law of Buddha were
now elapsed, and that he himself was the god who was destined to
appear after that period, and to abolish the old law by substituting
his own. But to his great mortification many of the monks undertook
to demonstrate the contrary; and this disappointment, combined with
his love of power and his impatience under the restraints of an
ascetic life, quickly disabused him of his imaginary godhead, and
drove him back to his palace and his harem. The king of Siam "is
venerated equally with a divinity.


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