But the Bodisat asked him, “Are you the water-demon who haunts this spot?”
“Yes! I am he!” was the reply.
“Have you received power over all who go down into the pool?”
“Yes, indeed! I carry off even a bird when it comes down, and I let no one off. You too I will devour, one and all!”
“We shall not allow you to eat us.”
“Well, then! drink away!”
“Yes! we shall drink the water too, but we shall not fall into your hands.”
“How, then, will you get at the water?”
“You imagine, I suppose, that we must go down to drink. But you are wrong! Each one of us eighty thousand shall take a Naḷa-cane and drink the water of your pond without ever entering it, as easily as one would drink from the hollow stem of a water-plant. And so you will have no power to eat us!”
It was when the Teacher as Buddha had recalled this circumstance that he uttered the first half of the following stanza: