HONOR TO GUNESH, GOD OF WISDOM

This book of Counsel read, and you shall see,
Fair speech and Sanscrit lore, and Policy.

ON the banks of the holy river Ganges there stood a city named
Pataliputra. The King of it was a good King and a virtuous, and his name
was Sudarsana. It chanced one day that he overheard a certain person
reciting these verses--

"Wise men, holding wisdom highest, scorn delights, as false as fair,
Daily live they as Death's fingers twined already in their hair.

Truly, richer than all riches, better than the best of gain,
Wisdom is, unbought, secure--once won, none loseth her again.

Bringing dark things into daylight, solving doubts that vex the mind,
Like an open eye is Wisdom--he that hath her not is blind."

Hearing these the King became disquieted, knowing that his own sons were
gaining no wisdom, nor reading the Sacred Writings,[2] but altogether
going in the wrong way; and he repeated this verse to himself--

"Childless art thou? dead thy children? leaving thee to want and dool?
Less thy misery than his is, who is father to a fool."

And again this--

"One wise son makes glad his father, forty fools avail him not:--