[93] 8.
"Why, as though you had lost your mind, having cut fresh green grass,
do you keep muttering 'Eat! Eat!' to an old ox whose life has gone?
For not by food nor by drink could a dead ox rise up again;
you are a fool and dull of wit, just like any other witless man."
[Sujāta the young man replied:]
"These feet, this head, this body together with its tail,
the eyes — all stand just as they were: this ox might yet rise up.
But of grandfather neither hands and feet nor body and head are seen;
you weep over a mound of clay — is it not you alone who are witless?"
[Having heard this, the householder spoke in praise of Sujāta:]
"Truly, while I was burning like a fire sprinkled with ghee,
you have, as if dousing me with water, quenched all my anguish.
Drawn out indeed is my dart, the sorrow that lodged in my heart:
you have dispelled the grief for my father from me who was overcome by sorrow.
With the dart drawn out, I have become cool, quenched;
I do not sorrow, I do not weep, having heard you, young man.
So act the wise, those who are compassionate:
they turn one back from sorrow, as Sujāta did his father."
The Goṇa Peta Story, the eighth.
#1 Yu.: tvaṃsi. 2 M.: taññova; Yu.: taññeva. 3 M.: abbahī.
#4 M.: abbūḷhasallosmi. 5 Yu.: vinivattayanti.
English translation from the Pali (Siam Raṭṭha edition) — under review, not for citation.