love of his half-penny. He was called king Half-penny. They ruled the kingdom in friendship and harmony. One day they went to the park together. After amusing themselves, king Udaya lay down with his head in king Half-penny's lap. He fell asleep, while the attendants were going here and there enjoying their amusements. King Half-penny thought, "Why should I always have only half the kingdom? I will kill him and be sole king:" so he drew his sword, but thinking to strike him remembered that the king had made him, when poor and mean, his partner and set him in great power, and that the thought which had risen in his mind to kill such a benefactor was a wicked one: so he sheathed the sword. A second and a third time the same thought rose. Feeling that this thought, rising again and again, would lead him on to the evil deed, he threw the sword on the ground and woke the king. "Pardon me, O king," he said and fell at his feet. "Friend, you have done me no wrong." "I have, O great king: I did such and such a thing." "Then, friend, I pardon you: if you desire it, be sole king, and I will serve under you as viceroy." He answered, "O king, I have no need of the kingdom, such a desire will cause me to be reborn in evil states: the kingdom is yours, take it: I will become an ascetic: I have seen the root of desire, it grows from a man's wish, [450] from henceforth I will have no such wish," and so in ecstasy he spoke the fourth stanza:--

I have seen thy roots, Desire: in a man's own will they lie.
I will no more wish for thee, and thou, Desire, shalt die.

So saying, he spoke the fifth stanza declaring the law unto a great multitude devoted to desires:--

Little desire is not enough, and much but brings us pain:
Ah! foolish men: be sober, friends, if ye would wisdom gain.

So declaring the law unto the multitude, he entrusted the realm to king Udaya: leaving the weeping multitude with tears on their faces, he went to the Himalaya, became an ascetic and reached perfect insight. At the time of his becoming an ascetic, king Udaya spoke the sixth stanza in complete expression of ecstasy:--

Little desire has brought me all the fruit,
Great is the glory Udaya acquires;
Mighty the gain if one is resolute
To be a Brother and forsake desires.

[451] No one knew the meaning of this stanza. One day the chief queen asked him the meaning of it. The king would not tell. There was a certain court-barber, called Gangamala, who when attending to the king used to use the razor first, and then grasp the hairs with his tweezers.