[186] On hearing this the people threw themselves down at the feet of the Great Being and, lamenting, said

Should Sutasoma go away,
What would become of us, we pray?

Then the Great Being said, "Well, grieve not: though I have been long with you, I shall now have to part from you; there is no permanence in any existing thing," and teaching the Law to the people, he said,

Like water through a sieve , our day
So brief alas! fast slips away:
With life thus circumscribed, I ween,
No room for carelessness is seen.

Like water through a sieve, our day
So brief alas! fast slips away:
With life thus circumscribed all round,
Only the fool is careless found.

Bound fast by lusts, wherein they fell,
Such men enlarge the bounds of Hell,
Crowd the brute world and realm of ghosts,
And multiply the demon hosts.

[187] Thus did the Great Being instruct the people in the Law, and climbing to the top of the Palace of Flowers he stood on the seventh storey, and with a sword he cut off his top-knot and cried, "I am now nothing to you; choose ye a king of your own," and with these words he threw his top-knot, turban and all, into the midst of the people. The people seized hold of it, and as they rolled over and over on the ground they loudly lamented, and a cloud of dust rose at this spot to a great height, and the people stepping back stood and looked at it, and said, "The king must have cut off his top-knot and thrown it, turban and all, into the midst of the crowd, and therefore it is that a cloud of dust has risen near the palace," and lamenting they uttered this stanza:

Yon cloud of dust see how it towers
Hard by the royal House of Flowers;
Famed King of Right, methinks, our lord
Has shorn his locks off with a sword.