They were delighted. "Speak on," said they, "we will answer."

Their teacher asked the question by repeating the first stanza:--

"Time all consumes, even time itself as well.
Who is't consumes the all-consumer?--tell !"

[261] The youths listened to the problem; but not one amongst them could answer it. Then said the Bodhisatta,

"Do not imagine that this question is in the Three Vedas. You imagine that you know all that I know, and so you act like the jujube tree . You don't know that I know a great deal which is unknown to you. Leave me now: I give you seven days--think over this question for so long."

So they made salutation, and departed each to his own house. There for a week they pondered, yet they could make neither head nor tail of the problem. On the seventh day, they came to their teacher, and greeted him, sitting down.

"Well, ye of auspicious speech, have you solved the question?"

"No, we have not," said they.

Again the Bodhisatta spoke in reproof, uttering the second stanza:--

"Heads grow on necks, and hair on heads will grow:
How many heads have ears, I wish to know?"

"Fools are ye," he went on, rebuking the youths: "ye have ears with holes in them, but not wisdom;" and he solved the problem. [262] They listened. "Ah," said they, "great are our Teachers!" and they craved his pardon, and quenching their pride they waited upon the Bodhisatta.

_____________________________

When the Master had ended this discourse, he identified the Birth: "At that time these Brothers were the five hundred pupils; and I myself was their teacher."

Footnotes

^181:1 Kalaghaso, the 'consumer of time,' is he who, by destroying the thirst for existence, so lives as not to be born again (Scholiast's explanation).

^181:2 The jujube fruit is often contrasted with the cocoa nut, as being only externally pleasing, see Hitop. i. 95.

[j246]