leave your home, this is not according to duty; it is wrong, surely, to disregard father and mother—­we cannot speak of such a thing with propriety!  Gotami, too, who has nourished you so long, fed you with milk when a helpless child, such love as hers cannot easily be forgotten; it is impossible surely to turn the back on a benefactor; the highly gifted virtuous mother of a child, is ever respected by the most distinguished families; to inherit distinction and then to turn round, is not the mark of a distinguished man.  The illustrious child of Yasodhara, who has inherited a kingdom, rightly governed, his years now gradually ripening, should not thus go away from and forsake his home; but though he has gone away from his royal father, and forsaken his family and his kin, forbid it he should still drive me away, let me not depart from the feet of my master; my heart is bound to thee, as the heat is bound up in the boiling water.  I cannot return without thee to my country; to return and leave the prince thus, in the midst of the solitude of the desert, then should I be like Sumanta, who left and forsook Rama; and now if I return alone to the palace, what words can I address to the king?  How can I reply to the reproaches of all the dwellers in the palace with suitable words?  Therefore let the prince rather tell me, how I may truly describe, and with what device, the disfigured body, and the merit-seeking condition of the hermit!  I am full of fear and alarm, my tongue can utter no words; tell me then what words to speak; but who is there in the empire will believe me?  If I say that the moon’s rays are scorching, there are men, perhaps, who may believe me; but they will not believe that the prince, in his conduct, will act without piety; for the prince’s heart is sincere and refined, always actuated with pity and love to men.  To be deeply affected with love, and yet to forsake the object of love, this surely is opposed to a constant mind.  O then, for pity’s sake! return to your home, and thus appease my foolish longings.”

The prince having listened to Kandaka, pitying his grief expressed in so many words, with heart resolved and strong in its determination, spoke thus to him once more, and said:  “Why thus on my account do you feel the pain of separation? you should overcome this sorrowful mood, it is for you to comfort yourself; all creatures, each in its way, foolishly arguing that all things are constant, would influence me to-day not to forsake my kin and relatives; but when dead and come to be a ghost, how then, let them say, can I be kept?  My loving mother when she bore me, with deep affection painfully carried me, and then when born she died, not permitted to nourish me.  One alive, the other dead, gone by different roads, where now shall she be found?  Like as in a wilderness, on some high tree, all the birds living with their mates assemble in the evening and at dawn disperse, so are the separations of the world; the floating