Thus spake the Bodhisatta, and he went on to say,--"And even as my master's misguided and misplaced effort in causing the rain of treasure to fall from heaven wrought both his own death and the destruction of others with him, even so shall every other man who by mistaken means seeks to compass his own advantage, utterly perish and involve others in his destruction." With these words did the Bodhisatta make the forest ring; and in this stanza did he preach the Truth, whilst the Tree-fairies shouted applause. The treasure he contrived to carry off to his own home, where he lived out his term of life in the exercise of almsgiving and other good works. And when his life closed, he departed to the heaven he had won.

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Said the Master, "This is not the first time, Brother, you were self-willed; you were self-willed in bygone times as well; and by your selfwill you came to utter destruction." His lesson ended, he identified the Birth by saying, "The selfwilled Brother was the Vedabbha-brahmin of those days, and I myself his pupil."

[Note. Dr Richard Morris was the first to trace in this Jataka an early form of Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale (see Contemporary Review for May, 1881); Mr H. T. Francis and Mr C. H. Tawney independently traced the same connection in the Academy, Dec. 22, 1883 (subsequently reprinted in an enlarged form), and in the Cambridge Journal of Philology, Vol. xii. 1883. See also Clouston's Popular Tales and Fictions.]

Footnotes

^123:1 Or perhaps a full stop should be inserted after eva ti, the words "Covetousness..ruin" being treated as a maxim quoted parenthetically by the author."