By these words the Great Being, as he was in the habit of compassion, was moved to tears, and commiserating them said, to be sure, something like this: 'Alas! alas!
11. 'Oh! How averse to tenderness, how devoid of shame, how little anxious about the next world the mind of that king is! Oh! How his senses, caught by his royal splendour, something as fickle as lightning, are blind to his good!
12. 'Oh! He does not understand that Death is near, I suppose, nor has he been taught the unhappy end of wickedness! Alas! Oh! Those poor and helpless kings who, owing to the weakness of their judgment, are impatient of listening to words (of counsel).
13. 'And, verily, this cruelty towards living beings is performed on account of one single body, a perishable substratum of illnesses[213]! Alas! Fie upon ignorance!'
Now, while letting his eyes full of pity and tenderness go over that people, this thought appeared to the chief of elephants: 'Being so tortured by hunger, thirst and fatigue, and their bodies having become so weak, how may they overcome that wilderness of an extent of many yoganas, where they find neither water nor shade, unless they have wholesome food? Nor does the forest of elephants contain proper food for them, not even for one day, without much trouble. Nevertheless, if they were to take their provisions from the flesh of my limbs and to use my bowels instead of bags, putting water in them, they would be able to cross this desert; not otherwise.
14. 'Let me, therefore, in their behalf employ my body, the abode of many hundreds of illnesses, that it may be for this multitude of men overwhelmed by suffering, like a raft to get across their misery.
15. 'Being born a man is the proper state for reaching happiness, either heavenly bliss or final extinction, and it is difficult to attain that state. May then this advantage not be dissolved to them!
16. 'Further, since they are come within the compass of my dominion, I rightly may call them my guests. And they are in distress and destitute of relations; hence I have to show the more pity to them.
17. 'And this vessel of many infirmities, this substratum of manifold toil caused by everlasting illness, this assemblage of evils, whose name is "body," will now, after a long time, have at last its proper employment, serving to relieve others.'
Then some of them, who suffered intensely from the pain of hunger, thirst, fatigue, and heat, after bowing to him with folded hands and eyes wet with tears, in the manner of supplicants, asked him for water by means of signs with their hands. Others spoke to him piteous words: