and kill the King's goats; and the goatherds had bidden themselves hard by to catch the rascals.

Mitta-vindaka picked himself up and saw the goats. Thought he to himself, "Well, it was a goat in an island in the ocean that, being seized by the leg, hurled me here over seas. Perhaps, if I do the same by one of these goats, I may get hurled back again to where the daughters of the gods dwell in their ocean palaces." So, without thinking, he seized one of the goats by the leg. At once the goat began to bleat, and the goatherds came running up from every side. They laid hold of him at once, crying, "This is the thief that has so long lived on the King's goats." And they, beat him and began to haul him away in bonds to the King.

Just at that time the Bodhisatta, with his five hundred young Brahmins round him, was coming out of the city to bathe. Seeing and recognising Mitta-vindaka, he said to the goatherds, "Why, this is a pupil of mine, my good men; what have you seized him for?" "Master," said they, "we caught this thief in the act of seizing a goat by the lag, and that's why we've got hold of him." "Well," [241] said the Bodhisatta, "suppose you hand him over to us to live with us as our slave." "All right, sir," replied the men, and letting their prisoner go, they went their way. Then the Bodhisatta asked Mitta-vindaka where he had been all that long time; and Mitta-vindaka told him all that he had done.

"'Tis through not hearkening to those who wished him well," said the Bodhisatta, "that he has suffered all these misfortunes." And he recited this stanza:--

The headstrong man who, when exhorted, pays
No heed to friends who kindly counsel give,
Shall come to certain harm,--like Mittaka,
When by the leg he seized the grazing goat.

And in those times both that Teacher and Mitta-vindaka passed away, and their after-lot was according to their deeds.

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Said the Master, "This Losaka was himself the cause both of his getting little and of his getting Arahatship." His lesson ended, he shewed the connexion and identified the Birth by saying, "The Elder Losaka Tissa was the Mitta-vindaka of those days, and I the Teacher of world-wide fame ."

Footnotes

^106:1 On the authority of Subhuti, pamsu-pisacaka are said to form the fourth class of Petas (pretas) or 'ghosts' (who were cursed at once with cavernous maws and with mouths no bigger than a needle's eye, so that their voracity was never satisfied even in their customary coprophagic state). But neither Hardy's Manual of Buddhism (p. 58) nor the Milinda (p. 294) mentions pamsu-pisacaka as one of the four classes of Petas.