Hereupon he exclaimed, "He has robbed me of a golden bowl worth a full hundred thousand pieces; he has caused me a terrible loss." And intense sorrow came upon him, so that he lost command over himself and became like one distraught. [113] His money and goods he flung away at the door of the house; he threw off his upper and under cloths; and, armed with the beam of his scales as a club, he tracked the Bodhisatta down to the river-side. Finding the latter already crossing, he shouted to the boatman to put back, but the Bodhisatta told him not to do so. As the other stood there gazing and gazing at the retreating Bodhisatta, intense sorrow seized upon him, His heart grew hot; blood gushed from his lips;

and his heart cracked like the mud at the bottom of a tank, which the sun has dried up. Through the hatred which he had contracted against the Bodhisatta, he perished then and there. (This was the first time Devadatta conceived a grudge against the Bodhisatta.) The Bodhisatta, after a life spent in charity and other good works, passed away to fare according to his deserts.

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When the Supreme Buddha had ended this lesson, he, the All-Knowing One himself, uttered this stanza:--

If in this faith you prove remiss, and fail
To win the goal whereto its teachings lead,
--Then, like the hawker called 'the Serivan ,'
Full long you'll rue the prize your folly lost.

After having thus delivered his discourse in such a way as to lead up to Arahatship, the Master expounded the Four Truths, at the close whereof the fainthearted Brother was established in that highest Fruit of all, which is Arahatship.

And, after telling the two stories, the Master made the connexion linking them both together, and identified the Birth by saying in conclusion, "In those days Devadatta was the foolish hawker; and I myself was the wise and good hawker."

Footnotes

^14:1 The scholium here gives the rascal's name as 'Seriva,' not recognising that the gatha-word 'Serivayam' represents the 'sandhi' of Serivo (not Seriva) with ayam, just as dukkhayam on <page 168> of Vol. I. of the text represents dukkho ayam.

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