O then, for pity's sake! return to your home, and thus
appease my foolish longings."
The prince having listened to Kandaka, pitying his grief expressed in so
many words, with heart resolved and strong in its determination, spoke
thus to him once more, and said: "Why thus on my account do you feel the
pain of separation? you should overcome this sorrowful mood, it is for
you to comfort yourself; all creatures, each in its way, foolishly
arguing that all things are constant, would influence me to-day not to
forsake my kin and relatives; but when dead and come to be a ghost, how
then, let them say, can I be kept? My loving mother when she bore me,
with deep affection painfully carried me, and then when born she died,
not permitted to nourish me. One alive, the other dead, gone by
different roads, where now shall she be found? Like as in a wilderness,
on some high tree, all the birds living with their mates assemble in the
evening and at dawn disperse, so are the separations of the world; the
floating clouds rise like a high mountain, from the four quarters they
fill the void, in a moment again they are separated and disappear; so is
it with the habitations of men; people from the beginning have erred
thus, binding themselves in society and by the ties of love, and then,
as after a dream, all is dispersed; do not then recount the names of my
relatives; for like the wood which is produced in spring, gradually
grows and brings forth its leaves, which again fall in the
autumn-chilly-dews--if the different parts of the same body are thus
divided--how much more men who are united in society! and how shall the
ties of relationship escape rending? Cease therefore your grief and
expostulation, obey my commands and return home; the thought of your
return alone will save me, and perhaps after your return I also may come
back.
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