(Thus we learn that, having first valued the horses at a measure of hill-paddy to please the king, he was bribed by the horse-dealer to estimate that measure of rice at the worth of all Benares and its suburbs. And that though the walls of Benares were twelve leagues round by themselves, while the city and suburbs together were three hundred leagues round!

[paragraph continues] Yet the fool priced all this vast city and its suburbs at a single measure of rice!)

[126] Hereupon the ministers clapped their hands and laughed merrily. "We used to think," they said in scorn, "that the earth and the realm were beyond price; but now we learn that the kingdom of Benares together with its king is only worth a single measure of rice! What talents the valuer has! How has he retained his post so long? But truly the valuer suits our king admirably."

Then the Bodhisatta repeated this stanza :

Dost ask how much a peck of rice is worth?
--Why, all Benares, both within and out.
Yet, strange to tell, five hundred horses too
Are worth precisely this same peck of rice!

Thus put to open shame, the king sent the fool packing, and gave the Bodhisatta the office again. And when his life closed, the Bodhisatta passed away to fare according to his deserts.

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His lesson ended and the two stories told, the Master made the connexion linking both together, and identified the Birth by saying in conclusion,--"Udayi the Dullard was the stupid rustic valuer of those days, and I myself the wise valuer."

Footnotes

^21:1 See Vinaya, Vol. III. p. 158.

^21:2 Compare Vinaya, Vol. II. p. 167, and commentary thereon (Samanta-pasadika) for the right of seniors, according to the roster, to be served first. The manciple was to call out the roster.

^22:1 In the Ceylon R. A. S. J. 1884, p. 127, it is argued from the indefinite use of uttara-patha for all countries north of Benares that the date of writing must be before the 3rd century B.C., when Buddhistic embassies were sent to Mysore and North Canara and when the Dakshinapatha was familiar.

^23:1 The text of this stanza does not occur in Fausboll's Pali text, but is given by Leon Feer at page 520 of the Journal Asiatique for 1876 and is embodied in the 'Corrections and Additions' of Fausboll. That the stanza originally formed part of the Sinhalese recension is shown by the quotation of the opening words as the 'catchword' at the Commencement of the Jataka. See also Dickson in Ceylon J. R. A. S. 1884, p. 185.

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