8. There was a mighty king of the Plahvas (Persians) known by the name of Parigha; who was a victor of his enemies, and also the support of his realm, as the axle is the support of a carriage.
9. He was joined in true friendship with Suraghu, and was as closely allied to him as the god of love with the vernal spring.
10. It happened at one time, that a great drought occurred in the land of Suraghu, and it was attended by a famine, resembling the final desolation of the earth, brought on by the sins of men.
11. It destroyed a great number of his people, who were exhausted by hunger and debility; as a conflagration destroys the unnumbered living animals of the forest.
12. Seeing this great disaster of his people, Parigha was overwhelmed in grief; and he left his capital in despair, as a traveller leaves a city burnt down to the ground.
13. He was so sorely soul-sick at his inability to remove this unavertible calamity of his subjects, that he went to a forest to devote himself to devotion like Jíva the chief of devote. (Jíva is another name of Buddha, who betook himself to the forest on seeing the woes of human kind).
14. He entered a deep wood unseen by and unknown to his people, and there passed his time in his disgust with the world, and afar and away from mankind.
15. He employed himself in his austere devotion in the cavern of a mountain, and remained sober-minded, with his subsistence upon dry and withered leaves of trees.
16. It was by his subsisting on dry leaves for a long time, as fire devours them always, that he obtained the surname of the leaf-eater among the assembled devotees on that spot.
17. It was thenceforward that the good and royal sage passed under his title of the leaf-eater among the holy sages in all parts of Jambúdvípa (Asia).