"Go where thou canst find happiness, where'er the place may be;
Forest or village, there the wise both home and birthplace see;
Go where there's life; nor stay at home for death to master thee."

[81] So he went on and on, talking to the Bodhisatta, till he died. The Bodhisatta picked him up, and collecting all the villagers addressed them thus: "Look at this tortoise. When the other fish and tortoises went into the great river, he was too fond of home to go with them, and buried himself in the place where I get my clay. Then as I was digging for clay, I broke his shell with my big spade, and turned him out on the ground in the belief that he was a large lump of clay. Then he called to mind what he had done, lamented his fate in two verses of poetry, and expired. So you see he came to his end because he was too fond of his home. Take care not to be like this tortoise. Don't say to yourselves, 'I have sight, I have hearing, I have smell, I have taste, I have touch, I have a son, I have a daughter, I have numbers of men and maids for my service, I have precious gold'; do not cleave to these things with craving and desire. Each being passes through three stages of existence ." Thus did he exhort the crowd with all a Buddha's skill. The discourse was bruited abroad all over India, and for full seven thousand years it was remembered. All the crowd abode by his exhortation; and gave alms and did good until at last they went to swell the hosts of heaven.

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When the Master had made an end, he declared the Truths, and identified the Birth:--at the conclusion of the Truths the young man was established in the Fruit of the First Path:--saying, "Ananda was then the Tortoise, and the Potter was I thyself."

Footnotes

^55:1 ahivatarogo occurs in the Comm. on Therigatha (P. T. S. 1893), p. 120, line 20, but no hint as to its meaning is given. The word should mean, "snake-wind-disease," perhaps malarial fever, which e.g. in the Terai is believed to be due to snake's breath. Or is it possible that ahi, which may mean the navel, could here be the bowels, and some such disease as cholera be meant?

^55:2 It is noteworthy that here the same means is used to outwit the spirit of disease as is often taken to outwit the ghosts of the dead; who might be supposed to guard the door, but not the parts of the house where there was no outlet.

^56:1 "Addressing the potter." Schol.

^56:2 World of Sense, World of Form, World of formless Existence.

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