"Kings should give punishment with careful measure:
Things done in haste they will repent at leisure.
Are there good resolutions in the heart,
No late repentance brings her bitter smart.

"They who do deeds which no repentance bring,
Carefully weighing every single thing,
Gain what is good, and do what satisfies
The holy, win the approval of the wise.

"What ho, my executioners!" you cried,
"Go seek my son, and where you find him, slay!"
Where I was sitting by my mother's side
They found me, dragged me cruelly away.

"A tender nursling, treated in this way,
I felt their cruel handling very sore.
Delivered from a cruel doom to-day
I'll leave the world, and live in it no more."

[452] When the Great Being had thus discoursed, the king said to his queen,

"So my young son, Sudhamma, says me nay,
Prince Somanassa, delicate and kind.
Now since I cannot gain my end to-day,
Thyself must see if thou canst turn his mind."

But she urged him to renounce the world in this stanza:

"O be the holy life thy pleasure, son!
Renounce the world, to righteousness stick fast:
Who of all creatures cruel is to none,
Blameless to Brahma's world will come at last."

Then the king repeated a stanza:

"This is a marvel which I hear from thee,
Sorrow to sorrow heaping up on me.
[453] I asked thee to persuade our son to stay,
Thou dost but urge him more to haste away."

Again the queen repeated a stanza:

"There are who live from sin and sorrow free,
Blameless, and who Nirvana's height attain:
If of their noble path the prince would be
A partner, to withhold him is in vain."

In reply the king recited the last stanza:

"Surely 'tis good to venerate the wise,
In whom deep wisdom and high thoughts arise .
The queen has heard their words and learned their lore,
She feels no pain and has no longing more."

The Great Being then saluted his parents, asking them to pardon him if he did amiss, and with a reverent obeisance to the company set his face towards Himalaya. When the people had returned, he, with the deities who had come thither in human shape, traversed the seven ranges of hills and arrived at Himalaya. In a leaf-hut made by the heavenly architect Vissakamma he entered upon the religious life, and there he was waited upon by deities in the shape of a princely retinue until his sixteenth year. But the deceitful ascetic was set upon by the crowd and beaten to death. The Great Being cultivated the Faculty of Ecstasy, and became destined to Brahma's heaven.