Now the Brâhman reflected: 'The mother will return erelong, or it is likely that his paternal love will make him repent.' Thus considering, he tied their hands like a bundle of lotuses with a creeper, and as they were reluctant and looked back at their father, he began to drag those young and delicate children along with him, threatening them. At this moment K_ri_sh_n_â_g_inâ the girl, having never before experienced a sudden calamity, cried out with tears to her father: 65. 66. 'This cruel Brâhman, father, hurts me with a creeper. No, it is no Brâhman, to be sure. Brahmans are righteous, they say. It is an ogre under the guise of a Brâhman. Certainly he carries us off to eat us. Why do you suffer us, father, to be led away by this ogre?' And _G_âlin the boy lamented on account of his mother, saying: 67. 'I do not suffer so much by the violence of this Brâhman, as by the absence of mother. It is as if my heart is pierced by grief that I did not see her. 68. 'Oh! certainly, mother will weep for us for a long time in the empty hermitage, like the bird _k_âtaka[91] whose little ones have been killed. [91] This bird, the cuculus melanoleucus, is a favourite with Indian poets and rhetoricians. It is said to feed on raindrops. 69. 'How will mother behave, when coming back with the many roots and fruits she has gathered in the forest for us, she will find the hermitage empty? 70. 'Here, father, are our toy horses, elephants, and chariots. Half of them you must give to mother, that she may assuage her grief therewith. 71. 'You must also present to her our respectful salutations and withhold her at any rate from afflicting herself; for it will be difficult for us, father, to see you and her again. 72. 'Come, K_ri_sh_n_â, let us die. Of what use is life to us? We have been delivered by the prince to a Brâhman who is in want of money.' After so speaking they parted. But the Bodhisattva, though his mind was shaken by these most piteous laments of his children, did not move from the place where he was sitting. While representing to himself that it is not right to repent having given, his heart was burnt by the fire of irremediable grief, and his mind became troubled, as though it were paralysed by torpor occasioned by poison. The fanning of the cool wind made him soon recover his senses, and seeing the hermitage noiseless and silent, as it were, being devoid of his children, he said to himself in a voice choked with tears: 73. 'How is it possible that this man did not scruple to strike my very heart before my very eyes in my children?[92] O, fie on that shameless Brâhman! [92] Lit.: 'On my very heart, whose name is offspring.' This identification of the heart of the father with his children depends on an old formula, forming part of the prayers and sacred mantras of the g_ri_hya-books. Cp. also Kaushîtakibrâhma_n_opanishad II, 11.