[477] Thus he addressed them one after the other. Then the chaplain said to him: "Hatthipala my son, you say this because you do not know us. You think we are sages from the Himalayas, but such we are not, my son. This is King Esukari, and I am your father the chaplain." "Then," said the lad, "why are you dressed like sages?" "To try you," said he. "Why try me?" he asked. "Because, if you see us without renouncing the world, we are ready to perform the ceremony of sprinkling, and make you king." "Oh, my father," quoth he, "I want no royalty; I will renounce the world." Then his father replied, "Son Hatthipala, this is not a time for renouncing the world;" and he explained his intent in the fourth stanza:

"First learn the Vedas, get you wealth and wife
And sons, enjoy the pleasant things of life,
Smell, taste, and every sense: sweet is the wood
To live in then, and then the sage is good."

Hatthipala replied with a stanza:

"Truth comes not by the Vedas nor by gold;
Nor getting sons will keep from getting old;
[478] From sense there is release, as wise men know;
In the next birth we reap as now we sow."

In answer to the young man, the king now recited a stanza:

"Most true the words that from thy lips do go:
In the next birth we reap as now we sow,
Thy parents now are old: but may they see
A hundred years of health in store for thee."

"What do you mean, my lord?" asked the prince, and repeated two stanzas:

"He who in death, O King, a friend can find,
And with old age a covenant hath signed;
For him that will not die be this thy prayer,
A hundred years of life to be his share.

"As one who on a river ferries o'er
A boat, and journeys to the other shore,
So mortals do inevitably tend
To sickness and old age, and death's the end."