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one who was taught well and since his own studies were neglected, he could not have been in the wrong to overlook the usual greetings. The teacher asked him how he could have come to such an unfortunate conclusion. The pupil told him of all that he could not understand and interpret and how the other had put him to shame by interpreting everything clearly and correctly. And so the complaint was that the teacher must have taught him more carefully. The teacher asked the cleverer pupil whether this was true and he said that it all depended upon what the student did with the knowledge he was given. To explain himself more clearly, he gave a complete account of the whole journey. "On your advice, I have always trained myself to observe things carefully and think about them clearly. When I saw the footprints, we both knew they were of an elephant but I tried to study them more carefully, asked myself a question whether the elephant was male or female. From the size and shape of the footprints, I concluded that it was a female, I also noticed that the leaves on the tree and the sprouts of the bushes only on the right side were eaten and not on the left side. That is how I knew that she must have been blind in the left eye. Then I said it could not be an ordinary person to go on an elephant like this. So I decided that it must be a royal personage. At one place, I saw that the rider of the elephant got off probably to relieve himself or herself. Looking at the signs at the place of urination, I knew it was a queen. On the shrubs around that place I saw red fibres of her garment which indicated that she was not a widow. When I saw the print of her hands on the ground, it was clear that she got up only with the support of her hands which she had pressed hard against the ground. I concluded that she must have been pregnant and the way she planted her right foot, with some effort, I knew she was about to deliver a child.
Regarding the old woman, who asked us about her son, ! concluded from the fall of the pitcher to the ground that since it went back to the place from where it had come that is back to the earth of which it was made, the son also must have come back home from where he had started."
The teacher applauded the patient and thoughtful disciple and turned round to the other and said : "It is your own fault, my dear young man, that you do not think deeply and not mine. We teachers teach the fundamentals of any science, to fill in the details is your business."
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