Filled with shame, King Golden Mallard said, "This fellow has neither modesty within his heart nor decency in his outward behaviour; I certainly will not give my daughter to one so shameless." And there in the midst of all that assembly of the birds, he repeated this stanza:--

A pleasing note is yours, a lovely back,
A neck in hue like lapis lazuli;
A fathom's length your outstretched feathers reach.
Withal, your dancing loses you my child.

Right in the face of the whole gathering King Royal Mallard gave his daughter to a young mallard, a nephew of his. Covered with shame at the loss of the mallard princess, [208] the peacock rose straight up from the place and fled away. And King Golden Mallard too went back to his dwelling-place.

"Thus, Brethren," said the Master, "this is not the only time his breach of modesty has caused him loss; just as it has now caused him to lose the jewel of the faith, so in bygone days it lost him a jewel of a wife." When he had ended this lesson, he shewed the connexion and identified the Birth by saying,

_____________________________

"The Brother with the many belongings was the peacock of those days, and I myself the Royal Mallard."

[Note. See Plate XXVII. (11) of the Stupa of Bharhut (where a fragment of a carving of this story is figured), Benfey's Panca-Tantra I. p. 280, and Hahn's Sagewiss. Studien, p. 69. Cf. also Herodotus, VI. 129.]

Footnotes

^83:1 No. 6.

^83:2 i.e. Brethren, Sisters, lay-brothers, and lay-sisters.

^83:3 Cf. No. 270.

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