[126]
6. Sāvatthī by name is a city beside the Himavant;
there, so I have heard, were two youths, sons of the king.
Heedless amid things that arouse lust, delighting in the relish of sensual pleasures,
greedy for present pleasure, they did not see what was to come.
Those sons went hence, from the human state, to the world beyond;
and they, unseen, cry out, proclaiming the wrong they themselves had done in the past:
"While many good men indeed were present, while offerings (deyyadhamma) stood ready,
we were unable to make for ourselves even a little security conducive to happiness.
What could be worse than this — that we, fallen from the royal family,
have arisen in the domain of petas (petavisaya), beset by hunger and thirst?
Having been masters here, there they become masters no more;
human beings, raised high and brought low, die of hunger and thirst.
Knowing thus this danger (ādīnava), sprung from the conceit of lordship,
a man, having abandoned the intoxication of lordship, would go to heaven (sagga);
at the breaking up of the body, possessed of wisdom, he arises in heaven."
End of the Kumārapetavatthu, the sixth.
English translation from the Pali (Siam Raṭṭha edition) — under review, not for citation.