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to enable me also to keep the feast.' His mother, when she heard what her son said, remembering the previous wealth of the family, began to weep with piteous sobs, as her throat was filled with a weight of woe; for women have no other resource than weeping. When the women who lived in the neighbourhood heard the mother of the grazer of calves weeping, they said to her: Why do you weep?' When they asked her, she told them her story. Then they felt pity for her, and, to satisfy the boy, gave her milk, rice, molasses, and clarified butter. Out of it she made a pudding, and then the boy took the food and sat down to eat it. His mother said, 'It is hot,' and covered up the pudding mixed with molasses and butter; so the boy remained patiently waiting. At that moment a hermit, with body dried up by mortification, who had conquered his senses and conquered all trials of patience,* came there to beg. The boy, when he saw him, thought in his heart: Fortunate am I, in that this saint, who is an eminent treasure of merit, has come here.' Then the noble-hearted boy relieved the hermit by giving him the pudding. Accordingly, by virtue of the gift to the hermit, he acquired merit that would ensure him one happy life as a man. He himself ate another pudding full of butter and molasses. At eventide the people said: Where have you left those calves?' Then he went out into the environs of the city to look for them. When he came back to the city, having hunted them up, he found the gates of the city closed. So he remained outside the city, and listened to the religious discourse of the hermit on the twelve vows against the killing of living creatures, and so on. While thus engaged, his allotted period of life came to an end, and he died during the night. He was conceived again in that very city in the family of a certain merchant. From the day of his conception the merchant was blessed with an increase
*Hunger, thirst, cold, heat, stinging flies, etc. See Dr. Hoernle's note in the Uvásaga-Dasáo,' appendix iii., p. 47, where twenty-two such trials' are enumerated. The word in the original is parísaha. † See Dr. Hoernle's Uvásaga-Dasáo,' appendix iii., p. 34.
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