My food is pure rice from the hill,
With a delicate flavour of meat,
For why should a sinner fulfil
A rule meant for saints, when they eat?

On hearing this the Bodhisatta recited two more stanzas:--

Brahmin, go range the length and breadth of earth;
Lo! suffering is found the common lot.
Here marred by sin thy ruined life is worth
Less than the fragments of a shattered pot.
Beware ambition and o'ermastering greed:
Vices like these to "Worlds of Suffering" lead.

[30] Then the king being pleased with his exposition of the law, asked him of what caste he was. "I am a pariah, my lord," he said. "Friend," he replied, "had you been of a high caste family, I would have made you sole king. But henceforth I will be king by day, and you shall be king by night." And with these words he placed upon his neck the wreath of flowers with which he himself was adorned, and made him lord protector over the city. And hence is derived the custom for the lords of the city to wear a wreath of red flowers on their neck. And from that day forward the king abiding in his admonition paid respect to his teacher, and learned sacred texts from him, sitting on a lower seat.

The Master, his lesson ended, identified the Birth: "At that time Ananda was the king, and I myself was the pariah."

Footnotes

^18:1 1 See Oldenberg's Vinaya, iv. 203. (Suttavibhnga, Sekhiya, 68, 69.)

^18:2 See Manu ii. 198 for the rule that the disciple must sit on a seat lower than his guru.

^19:1 The Scholiast in his explanation adds this verse:

True faith of yore prevailed on earth,
False doctrine was a later birth.