The verses take their name from their opening simile and belong to a discourse addressed to a king. The image is of vast rocks touching the sky, advancing from all four directions and grinding down whatever lies between — a picture of something that cannot be met with force, treaty or wealth, which is precisely the point made of ageing and death in the stanzas that follow.

The book gives two footnote references, one to the Sutta-nipāta and one to the Saṃyutta, which suggests the passage is either found in both places or that the two markers belong to different points on the page. Both are recorded in the source field as the book gives them.

As with several preceding chants, no Thai rendering is printed, so this entry stands at two of the five layers and the English is my own off the Pali.

The simile is built to exclude every escape in turn. The rocks are วิปุลา, vast; they reach the sky; they come from all four quarters; and they advance grinding everything down. Nothing is left outside their reach, and no direction offers a way out. Only after that picture is complete does the verse say เอวัง, just so — and name what the simile is about.

What follows is a list of ranks: khattiya, brahmin, merchant, servant, outcaste and refuse-worker. The point of naming them is that the list makes no difference. Ageing and death spare none and crush all alike. Then three things that ordinarily do decide outcomes are dismissed in turn — there is no ground there for elephants, none for chariots, none for infantry, and no conquest by battle of spells or by wealth.

The conclusion is drawn as advice rather than as lament. Therefore a wise person, seeing their own good, should settle faith in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Saṅgha. And the one who lives by Dhamma in body, in speech and in mind is praised here in this very life and rejoices hereafter. The verses do not offer an escape from what the simile described; they offer the only thing that is not touched by it.