One day a villager invited the teacher, intending to offer food to the brahmins. Now it happened that rain fell in the night, and flooded all the hollows in the road. Early in the morning the teacher summoned wise Citta, and said, "My lad, I cannot go, do you go with the young men, and pronounce a blessing, eat what you get for yourself and bring home what there is for me." Accordingly he took the young brahmins, and went. While the young men bathed, and rinsed their mouths, the people prepared rice porridge, which they set ready for them, saying, "Let it cool." Before it was cool, the young men came and sat down. The people gave them the water of offering, and set the bowls in front of them. Sambhuta's wits were somewhat muddled, and imagining it to be cool, took up a ball of the rice and put it in his mouth, but it burnt him like a red-hot ball of metal. In his pain he forgot his part altogether, and glancing at wise Citta, he said, in the Candala dialect; "Hot, aint it?" [392] The other forgot himself too, and answered in their manner of speech, "Spit it out, spit it out." At this the young men looked at each other, and said, "What kind of language is this?" Wise Citta pronounced a blessing.

When the young men came home, they gathered in little knots and sat here and there discussing the words used. Finding that it was the dialect of the Candalas, they cried out on them, "O vile outcasts! you have been tricking us all this while, and pretending to be brahmins!" And they beat them both. One good man drove them out, saying, "Away! the blot's in

the blood. Be off! Go somewhere and become ascetics." The young brahmins told their teacher that these two were Candalas.

The pair went out into the woods, and there took up the ascetic life, and after no long time died, and were born again as the young of a doe on the banks of the Neranjara. From the time of their birth they always went about together. One day, when they had fed, a hunter espied them under a tree ruminating and cuddling together, very happy, head to head, nozzle to nozzle, horn to horn. He cast a javelin at them, and killed them both by one blow.

After this they were born as the young of an osprey, on the bank of Nerbudda. There too, when they grew up, after feeding they would cuddle together, head to head and beak to beak. A bird snarer saw them, caught them together, and killed them both.