Part 2: Meeting with a Brāhman

After taking such counsel together, while they all remained resolved on death, then a Brāhman came, wearing reddish garments. The head of a Brāhman village, he, lotus-hand raised, made them live, speaking to them in words equal to a life-giving herb:

“Gentlemen, why are you confused about what to do, your minds disordered, like hares that have fallen when a hunter has rushed on them? If your master’s sixty thousand sons have died there simultaneously like twins, enough of grief. People born together, sometimes die separately; born separately, sometimes they die together. Many die, and few die, since death is the attendant of all living things. Death can not be warded off any one by any one even with a hundred efforts, like the inborn nature of people. If it can be warded off, why is it not warded off by Indras and emperors, etc., from themselves and their own people?

A thunderbolt falling from the sky can be caught by the hand, the agitated ocean can be restrained by a dike, the raging fire at the end of the world can be extinguished, the wind that has arisen as a portent of the end of the world can be slowed down, a falling mountain can be propped up with a prop, but death can not be warded off by a hundred devices. Do not be grieved at the thought, ‘Our master’s sons died before our eyes.’ Be firm now. I shall quickly rescue your master drowning in a sea of sorrow by an enlightening speech like a hand.”