14. In calamities constancy has no effect, and in sorrow learning is of no use. No being is to be found, indeed, who does not shake, when stricken.
'Therefore, tell me the truth.
15. 'Do you bewail your life dear to yourself, or your wealth, the instrument of pleasures, or your relations, or perhaps your royal rank? Or is it the recollection of your father who loves his son so much, or that of your own children who now weep for you, which makes these tears burst from your eyes ?
The Bodhisattva said:
16. 'It is not the thought either of my life or my parents, children, relatives, and wives, or the recollection of the pleasures of royalty, that moves me to tears; but some Brâhman who came to me hopeful, relying on the well-said sentences he brings with him. Forsooth, hearing that I have been carried off, he must grieve with despair. This I remembered, and hence my eyes are wet with tears.
17. 'For this reason you ought to let me go in order that I may refresh the heart of that Brâhman, now distressed with the grief of disappointment, pouring on it the water of honourable reward, and on the other hand, that I may take from him the honey of sentences he offers me.
18. 'After thus paying my debt to that Brâhman, I will come back to you again, that I may be also free from debt with respect to you, and afford gladness to your eyes beholding me returning here.
19. 'Do not, however, suspect me, troubling your mind with the thought this may be some contrivance of mine to go off. Men like me, O king, follow a way different from that on which other people are wont to walk.'
The son of Sudása spoke :
20. 'What you say, as if it were something worth regard, is a thing which utterly exceeds belief. Who, indeed, being released from the mouth of Death and having recovered his freedom of movement, would go to meet it once more?
