Next day in the same manner king and chaplain repaired to the house of Prince Ajapala, who greeted them with joy as the others had done. They told the cause of their coming, and proposed to upraise the umbrella of royalty. The prince said: "Where are my brothers?" They answered, "Your brothers will have nothing to do with the kingdom; they have renounced the White Umbrella, and with a company that covers three leagues they are sitting upon the Ganges bank." "I will not put upon my head that which my brothers have spewed out of their mouths, and so live; but I too will undertake the religious life." They said, "My son, you are very young; your welfare is our care; grow older, and you shall embrace the religious life." But the lad said, "What is this you say? Surely death comes in youth as in age! No one has a mark in hand or foot to show whether he will die young or die old. I know not the time of my death, and therefore I will now renounce the world altogether." He then recited two stanzas:

"Oft have I seen a maiden young and fair,
Bright-eyed , intoxicate with life, her share
Of joy untasted yet, in youth's first spring:
Death came and carried off the tender thing.

"So noble, handsome lads, well-made and young,
Round whose dark chins the beard in clusters clung--
I leave the world and all its lusts, to be
A hermit: go thou home, and pardon me."

[483] Then he went on, "There you stand, and even as I talk with you disease, old age, and death are approaching me." He saluted them both, and at the head of a league-long company he repaired to the Ganges bank. Hatthipala poised in the air declared the Law to him also, and sat down to wait for the great gathering which he expected.

Next day the chaplain began to meditate as he sat upon his couch. "My sons," thought he; "have embraced the religious life; and now I am alone the withered stump of a man. I will follow the religious life also." Then he addressed this stanza to his wife:

"That which has branching boughs a tree they call:
Disbranched, it is a trunk, no tree at all.
So is a sonless man, my high-born wife:
'Tis time for me to embrace the holy life."

This said, he summoned the brahmins before him: sixty thousand of them came. Then he asked them what they meant to do. [484] "You are our teacher," they said. "Well," quoth he, "I shall seek out my son and embrace the religious life." They answered, "Hell is not hot for you alone; we will do likewise." He handed over his treasure, eighty crores,

to his wife, and at the head of a league-long train of brahmins departed to the place where his sons were. And unto this company as before Hatthipala declared the Law, poised on high in the air.