When the Supreme Buddha had delivered this discourse, he, the All-Knowing One himself, uttered this stanza:

Untiring, deep they dug that sandy track
Till, in the trodden way, they water found.
So let the sage, in perseverance strong,
Flag not nor tire, until his heart find Peace.

[110] This discourse ended, he preached the Four Truths, at the close whereof the fainthearted Brother was established in the highest Fruit of all, which is Arahatship.

Having told these two stories, the Master established the connexion linking them both together, and identified the Birth by saying:--"This fainthearted Brother of to-day was in those days the serving-lad who, persevering, broke the rock and gave water to all the people; the Buddha's followers were the rest of the people of the caravan; and I myself was their leader."

Footnotes

^9:1 The terms pabbajja and upasampada, which denote the two stages of initiation for a Brother of the Buddhist Order, and are comparable with the successive degrees of Bachelor and Master in a Faculty, suggest the successive ordinations of Deacon and Priest. But, as it is misleading to use Christian phraseology in speaking of the Buddhist philosophy, these convenient terms have been eschewed in the translation. As will be seen from the Vinaya (Mahavagga I. 49-51), fifteen was the normal age for pabbajja and twenty for upasampada, the interval being that of five years mentioned in the text.

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