gaze likewise, looking at the exceeding glory of the Ikshvaku.  As the glory of the rising sun is able to affect the herds of milch kine, so as to increase the quantity of their sweet-scented milk, so those Brahmakarins, with wondrous joy, thus spoke one to the other:  “Surely this is one of the eight Vasu Devas”; others, “this is one of the two Asvins”; others, “this is Mara”; others, “this is one of the Brahmakayikas”; others, “this is Suryadeva or Kandradeva, coming down; are they not seeking here a sacrifice which is their due?  Come let us haste to offer our religious services!”

The prince, on his part, with respectful mien addressed to them polite salutation.  Then Bodhisattva, looking with care in every direction on the Brahmakarins occupying the wood, each engaged in his religious duties, all desirous of the delights of heaven, addressed the senior Brahmakarin, and asked him as to the path of true religion.  “Now having just come here, I do not yet know the rules of your religious life.  I ask you therefore for information, and I pray explain to me what I ask.”

On this that twice-born (Brahman) in reply explained in succession all the modes of painful discipline, and the fruits expected as their result.  How some ate nothing brought from inhabited places but that produced from pure water, others edible roots and tender twigs, others fruits and flowers fit for food, each according to the rules of his sect, clothing and food in each case different; some living amongst bird-kind, and like them capturing and eating food; others eating as the deer the grass and herbs; others living like serpents, inhaling air; others eating nothing pounded in wood or stone; some eating with two teeth, till a wound be formed; others, again, begging their food and giving it in charity, taking only the remnants for themselves; others, again, who let water continually drip on their heads and those who offer up with fire; others who practise water-dwelling like fish; thus there are Brahmakarins of every sort, who practise austerities, that they may at the end of life obtain a birth in heaven, and by their present sufferings afterwards obtain peaceable fruit.

The lord of men, the excellent master, hearing all their modes of sorrow-producing penance, not perceiving any element of truth in them, experienced no joyful emotion in his heart; lost in thought, he regarded the men with pity, and with his heart in agreement his mouth thus spake:  “Pitiful indeed are such sufferings! and merely in quest of a human or heavenly reward, ever revolving in the cycle of birth or death, how great your sufferings, how small the recompense!  Leaving your friends, giving up honorable position; with a firm purpose to obtain the joys of heaven, although you may escape little sorrows, yet in the end involved in great sorrow; promoting the destruction of your outward form, and undergoing every kind of painful penance, and yet seeking to obtain another birth; increasing and prolonging the causes