Actuated by a desire to shew his gratitude, he went with one hundred thousand pieces to call on Treasurer Little. "How did you come by all this wealth?" asked the Treasurer. "In four short months, simply by following your advice," replied the young man; and he told him the whole story, starting with the dead mouse. Thought Lord High Treasurer Little, on hearing all this, "I must see that a young fellow of these parts does not fall into anybody else's hands." So he married him to his own grown-up daughter and settled all the family estates on the young man. And at the Treasurer's death, he became Treasurer in that city. And the Bodhisatta passed away to fare according to his deserts.

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[123] His lesson ended, the Supreme Buddha, the All-Knowing One himself, repeated this stanza:

With humblest start and trifling capital
A shrewd and able man will rise to wealth,
E'en as his breath can nurse a tiny flame.

Also the Blessed One said, "It is through me, Brethren, that Little Wayman has just now risen to great things in the Faith, as in times past to great things in the way of wealth." His lesson thus finished, the Master made the connexion between the two stories he had told and identified the Birth in these concluding words, "Little Wayman was in those days the pupil of Treasurer Little, and I myself Lord High Treasurer Little."

[Note. The 'Introductory Story' occurs in Chapter vi. of Capt. T. Rogers' Buddhaghosha's Parables, but the 'Story of the Past' there given is quite different. See Mrs Bode's 'Women Leaders of the Buddhist Reformation' in the J. R. A. S. 1893, p. 556. See also Dhammapada, p. 181, and compare Chapter xxxv. of the Divyavadana, edited by Cowell and Neil, 1886. The whole Jataka, in an abbreviated form, forms the story of 'The Mouse Merchant' at pages 33, 34 of the first volume of Tawney's translation of the Katha Sarit Sagara. See also Kalilah and Dimnah, Chapter XVIII. (Knatchbull, page 358).]

Footnotes

^14:2 Jivaka, a prominent lay-follower of the Buddha, was physician to the Magadha King Seniya Bimbisara. See, for his history, the account in the Vinaya (Mahavagga VIII. 1).

^15:1 Buddhism teaches the impermanence of things, and chief of the trains of thought for realising this doctrine is the meditation on the body and its 32 impurities (see Sutta Nipata I. 11, and the [*12th Jataka] infra). At the present day every novice in Ceylon, when invested with the yellow robe of the Order, repeats the verses which enumerate the 32 impurities.

^17:1 These four branches were (i) understanding of the sense of the sacred books, (ii) understanding of their ethical truth, (iii) ability to justify an interpretation grammatically, logically, &c., and (iv) the power of public exposition.