"He that would set himself on high must not all-gentle be
Nor all-severe: but both these things practise in company.

"Contempt the all-gentle wins, and he that's all-severe, has wrath:
So of the pair be well aware, and keep a middle path.

"Much can the angry man, O king, and much the knave can say:
And therefore for a woman's sake thy son thou must not slay."

[193] But for all they could say in many ways the courtiers could not win him to do their bidding. The Bodhisatta also, for all his beseeching, could not persuade him to listen: nay, the king said, blind fool--"Away! down with him over the thieves' cliff!" repeating the eighth stanza:

"One side the whole world stands, my queen on the other all alone;
Yet her I cleave to: cast him down the cliff, and get you gone!"

At these words, not one among the sixteen thousand women could remain unmoved, while all the populace stretched out their hands, and tore their hair, with lamentations. The king said, [194] "Let these but try to prevent the throwing of this fellow over the cliff!" and amidst his followers, though the crowd wailed around, he caused the prince to be seized, and cast down the precipice over heels head-first.

Then the deity that dwelt in the hill, by power of his own kindliness, comforted the prince, saying, "Fear not, Paduma!" and in both hands he caught him, pressed him to his heart, sent a divine thrill through him, set him in the abode of the serpents of the eight ranges , within the hood of the king of the serpents. The serpent king received the Bodhisatta into the abode of the serpents, and gave him the half of his own glory and state. There for one year he dwelt. Then he said, "I would go back to the ways of men." "Whither?" they asked. "To Himalaya, where I will live a religious life." The serpent king gave his consent; taking him, he conveyed him to the place where men go to and fro, and gave him the requisites of the religious, and went back to his own place.

So he proceeded to Himalaya, and embraced the religious life, and cultivated the faculty of ecstatic bliss; there he abode, feeding upon fruits and roots of the woodland.

Now a certain wood-ranger, who dwelt in Benares, came to that place, and recognised the Great Being. "Are you not," he asked, "the great Prince Paduma, my lord?" "Yes, Sir," he replied. The other saluted him, and there for some days he remained. Then he returned to Benares, and said to the king; "Your son, my lord, has embraced the religious life in the region of Himalaya, and lives, in a hut of leaves. I have been staying with him, and thence I come." "Have you seen him with your