15. 'In the case of the lotuses, their opening and shutting depend on time, but the effort to take the breast not so. Moreover, there is no exertion in the lotus, but in the case of the suckling it is evident there is. It is the power of the sun that is the cause of the lotuses expanding.
'In this manner, then, Your Majesty, by a close and careful examination it is possible to have faith in the world hereafter.'
But the king, as he was deeply attached to the false lore he professed, also because the extent of his sin was large, felt uneasy on hearing that account of the other world, and spoke: 'Why, great Rishi,
16. 'If the next world is not that (well-known) bugbear for children, or if thou judgest it fit for me to believe in it, well, lend me five hundred nishkas[207] here, and I shall give thee back one thousand in the next existence.'
Now when the king, according to his habitual boldness, had uttered without scruple this unbecoming language, which was as it were the vomiting of the poison of his wrong belief, the Bodhisattva answered him in a very proper way.
17. 'Still in this world those who wish to employ their money, in order to augment it, do not make any loan at all to a wicked person or a glutton or a blockhead or a sluggard. For wealth going to such persons, tends to their ruin.
18. 'But if they see one bashful, with thoroughly subdued senses, and skilled in business, to such a one they offer a loan, even unwitnessed. Such a bestowal of money produces bliss.
19. 'The very same line of conduct must be followed, O king, with respect to a debt payable in the world hereafter. But it is not suitable to contract such a loan with thee who art a person of a wicked behaviour because of the evil doctrine thou professest.
20. 'For, at the time when, being precipitated into hell by thy own cruel actions originating in the sin of a wicked lore, thou wilt lie there, sore with pains and paralysed in thy mental powers, who would then call upon thee for a debt of one thousand nishkas?
21. 'There the regions of the sky do not shine in their full feminine beauty[208] by the beams of sun and moon, the destroyers of their veil of darkness. Nor is the firmament there seen with its ornament of crowds of stars, like a lake embellished by unclosed waterlilies.