No. 3.

SERIVANIJA-JATAKA.

"If in this faith." This lesson too was taught by the Blessed One while at Savatthi, also about a Brother who gave up persevering.

For, when the man was brought by the Brethren exactly as in the foregoing case, the Master said, "You, Brother, who after devoting yourself to this glorious doctrine which bestows Path and Fruit, [111] are giving up persevering, will suffer long, like the hawker of Seri who lost a golden bowl worth a hundred thousand pieces."

The Brethren asked the Blessed One to explain this to them. The Blessed One made clear a thing concealed from them by re-birth.

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Once on a time in the kingdom of Seri, five aeons ago, the Bodhisatta dealt in pots and pans, and was called 'the Serivan.' In the company of another dealer in the same wares, a greedy fellow who was also known as 'the Serivan,' he came across the river Telavaha and entered the city of Andhapura. Apportioning the streets between the two of them, he set about hawking his wares round the streets of his district, and the other did the same in his district.

Now in that city there was a decayed family. Once they had been rich merchants, but by the time of our story they had lost all the sons and brothers and all their wealth. The sole survivors were a girl and her grandmother, and they got their living by working for hire. Nevertheless, they had got in their house the golden bowl out of which in the old days the great merchant, the head of the family, used to eat; but it had been thrown among the pots and pans, and having been long out of use, was grimed over with dirt, so that the two women did not know that it was gold. To the door of their house came the greedy hawker on his round, crying, "Waterpots to sell! Waterpots to sell!" And the damsel, when she knew be was there, said to her grandmother, "Oh, do buy me a trinket, grandmother."

"We're very poor, dear; what can we offer in exchange for it?" "Why here's this bowl which is no good to us. Let us change that for it."

The old woman had the hawker brought in and seated, and gave him the bowl, saying, "Take this, sir, and be so good as to give your sister something or other in exchange."

The hawker took the bowl in his hand, turned it over, and, suspecting it was gold, scratched a line on the back of it with a needle, whereby he