when the children spoke to her again and again about it, she said to her husband, "These children are continually troubling me. Can our parents kill us and eat us when they see us ? Come, let us make the boys acquainted with their relatives on the grandfather's side."
"Well, I myself daren't meet them face to face, but I will take you there."
"Very well, then; any way you like: the children ought to be made acquainted with their grandfather's family."
So they two took the children, and in due course arrived at Rājagaha, and put up at a chowltrie (a public resting-place) at the gate of the town. And the mother, taking the two boys, let her parents know of her arrival. When they heard the message, they sent her back word to the following effect: "To be without sons and daughters is an unheard-of thing among ordinary people;[1] but these two have sinned so deeply against us, that they cannot stand in our sight. Let them take such and such a sum, and go and dwell wherever they two may like. But the children they may send here." And their daughter took the money her parents sent, and handing over her children to the messengers, let them go.
And the children grew up in their grandfather's house. Little Roadling was much the younger of the two, but Great Roadling used to go with his grandfather to hear the Buddha preach; and by constantly hearing the Truth from the mouth of the Teacher himself, his mind turned towards renunciation of the world. And he said to his grandfather, "If you would allow it, I should enter the Order."
"What are you saying, my child?" answered the old man. "Of all persons in the world I would rather have you enter the Order. Become a monk by all means, if
- ↑ Literally, "those subject to transmigration," that is, those who are not Arahats, whose natural desires have not given way before intense religious conviction.
