"And the Buddha said: 'I want only a few grains of mustard-seed. Leave here the boy, and go you and bring them to me.' "The girl refused to part with her baby, but promised to get the seed for him. "As she was about to set out, the pitiful Buddha, recalling her, said: 'My sister, the mustard-seed that I require must be taken from a house where no child, parent, husband, wife, relative, or slave has ever died.' "The young mother replied, 'Very good, my lord'; and went her way, taking her boy with her, and setting him astride on her hip, with his lifeless head resting on her bosom. "Thus she went from house to house, from palace to hut, begging for some grains of mustard-seed. "The people said to her: 'Here are the seeds; take them, and go thy way.' "But she first asked: 'In this, my friend's house, has there ever died a child, a husband, a parent, or a slave?' "And they one and all replied: 'Lady, what is this that thou hast said? Knowest thou not that the living are few, but that the dead are many? There is no such house as thou seekest.' "Then she went to other houses and begged the grains of mustard-seed, which they gladly gave her, but to her questionings one said, 'I have lost a son'; another, 'I have lost a parent'; and yet another, 'I have lost a slave'; and every one and all of them made some such reply. "At last, not being able to discover a single house free from the dead, whence she could obtain the mustard-seed, and feeling utterly faint and weary, she sat herself down upon a stone, with her baby in her lap, and thinking sadly said to herself: 'Alas! this is a heavy task I have undertaken. I am not the only one who has lost her baby. Everywhere children are dying, parents are dying, loved ones are dying, and everywhere they tell me that the dead are more numerous than the living. Shall I then think only of my own sorrow?' "Thinking thus, she suddenly summoned courage to put away her sorrow for her dead baby, and she carried him to the forest and laid him down to rest under a tree; and having covered him over with tender leaves, and taking her last look of his loved face, she betook herself once more to the Buddha and bowed before him. "And he said to her: 'Sister, hast thou found the mustard-seed?' "'I have not, my lord, she replied, 'for the people in the village tell me there is no house in which some one has not died; for the living are few, but the dead are many.' "'And where is your baby?' "'I have laid him under a tree in the forest, my lord,' said Keesah, gently. "Then said the Buddha to her: 'You have found the grains of mustard-seed; you thought that you alone had lost a son, but now you have learned that the law of death and of suffering is among all living creatures, and that here there is no permanence.' "On hearing this Keesah was comforted, and established in the path of virtue, and was thenceforth called Keesah Godami, the disciple of the Buddha."[46]