[1234] And both of them, Your Majesty — my mother and father — are free from disease.
[Edition footnotes printed at this point: ¹ Maramma (Burmese) ed.: puttānaṃ. ² "These two verses are found only in the commentary books." ³ Maramma ed.: bhaṇḍena.]
And they keep themselves alive by gleaning (uñcha); and roots and fruits are abundant.
And gadflies and mosquitoes and creeping creatures are but few;
in the forest thronged with beasts of prey, no harm befalls the two of them.
Digging up ālu and kalamba tubers, viḷāli and takkala bulbs,
with jujube (kola), marking-nut (bhallātaka), and bael fruit (bela),(1) she fetches them home and nourishes us.
And whatever she brings back, she who gathers the roots and fruits of the forest,
that we all, having come together, eat by night, not by day.
And our mother has grown thin and sallow from bringing in the fruit of the trees;
delicate as she is, through wind and sun she has become like a lotus taken into the hand.
While mother, her hair grown sparse, wanders in the vast forest —
a forest thronged with beasts of prey, the haunt of rhinoceros and leopard —
binding her hair into a matted coil, she has worn the sweat-grime at her armpits;
(wearing the guise of a brahmin — bearing the hooked staff (āsada), the sacrificial ladle (camasa), and matted locks —)(2)
clad in hides she lies upon the bare ground and venerates the sacred fire (jātaveda).
English translation from the Pali (Siam Raṭṭha edition) — under review, not for citation.