In traditional accounts of the life of the Buddha, he has an evil cousin named Devadatta. When the Buddha grows old, Devadatta, himself a monk, urges the Buddha to retire and turn leadership of the order of monks over to him. When the Buddha refuses, Devadatta tries to assassinate him on three different occasions. The weight of these sins is so great that he is swallowed by the earth, descending to the most horrific of the several Buddhist hells, where he is impaled on three iron spikes, one from his head to his feet, one through his chest, and one through his shoulders. When Buddhist monks at the Siamese court saw the crucifixes around the necks of the French Jesuits, they assumed that it was Devadatta, that the foreign priests worshipped the Buddha’s nemesis. Several members of the French delegation reported that this dashed any hopes of conversion. When they tried to explain that this was not Devadatta but God, the Buddhist monks doubted that someone as powerful as God could succumb to such a punishment.