"Why has he come here?" asked the king. Then the brahmin repeated his couplet, to ask for the ox:--

"I had two oxen to my plough, with which my work was done,
But one is dead! O mighty prince, please take the other one!"

The king saw that there was some mistake. "Somadatta," said he, smiling, "you have plenty of oxen at home, I suppose?"

"If so, great king, they are your gift!"

At this answer the king was pleased. He gave the man, for a brahmin's offering, sixteen oxen, with fine caparison, and a village to live in, and sent him away with great honour. The brahmin ascended a car drawn by Sindh horses, pure white, and went to his dwelling in great pomp.

As the Bodhisatta sat beside his father in the chariot, said he, "Father, I taught you the whole year long, and yet when the moment came you gave your ox to the king!" and he uttered the first stanza:--

"All the year long never ceasing with unwearied diligence
Where the sweet grass grows in clusters day by day he practised it:
When he came amid the courtiers all at once he changed the sense;
Practice truly nought availeth if a man has little wit."

[167] When he heard this, the brahmin uttered the second stanza:

"He that asks, dear Somadatta, takes his chance between the two--
May get more, or may get nothing: when you ask, 'tis ever so."

_____________________________

When the Master by this story had shown how Simpleton Udayi had been just as bashful before as he was then, he identified the Birth:--" Laludayi was the father of Somadatta, and I was Somadatta myself."

Footnotes

^115:1 Fausboll, Five Jatakas, p. 31; Comm. on Dhammapada verse 152 (p. 317 of F.'s edition).

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