"Great King, the man who says "Give me so and so," sheds tears, and the one who refuses and says "I have it not," in his turn weeps. If, when I begged, you should have refused me, I feared the people might see us mingling our tears. This is why I asked for a secret interview." Then from the beginning he repeated three stanzas:

Such is the quality of prayer, O king,
'Twill a rich gift or a refusal bring.

Who beg, Pancala lord, to weep are fain,
They who refuse are apt to weep again.

Lest people see us shed the idle tear,
My prayer I whisper in thy secret ear.

[81] The king, being charmed with this mark of respect on the part of the Bodhisatta, granted him the boon and spoke the fourth stanza:

Brahmin, I offer thee a thousand kine,
Red kine, and eke the leader of the herd;
Hearing but now these generous words of thine,
I too in turn to generous deed am stirred.

But the Bodhisatta said, "I do not, Sire, desire material pleasures. Give me that only which I ask for." And he took a pair of single-soled shoes and the parasol of leaves, and exhorted the king to be zealous in religion and to keep the moral law and observe fast days. And though the king begged hint to stay, he went off to the Himalayas, where he developed all the Faculties and Attainments, and was destined to birth in the Brahma-world.

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

Footnotes

^52:1 See Suttavibhanga vi. 1.

^52:2 No. 253, Vol. ii.

^53:1 See Mahavagga, v. 1. 28. Shoes with more than a single lining were not to be worn by the Brethren, except when they had been cast off by others.