On his way to his pleasaunce the King came to, the spot, and all the boys scampered off in fear of the King, leaving the cripple there helpless. At the sight of the litter of leaves the King asked, as he rode by in his chariot, who had cut the leaves off. And he was told that the cripple had done it. Thinking that here might be a way to stop the chaplain's mouth, the King asked where the cripple was, and was shewn him sitting at the foot of the tree. Then the King had him brought to him and, motioning his retinue to stand apart, said to the cripple, "I have a very talkative chaplain. Do you think you could stop his talking?"

"Yes, sire,--if I had a peashooter full of dry goat's dung," said the cripple. Then the King had him taken to the palace and set with a pea-shooter full of dry goat's dung behind a curtain with a slit in it, facing the chaplain's seat. When the brahmin came to wait upon the King and was seated on the seat prepared for him, his majesty started a conversation. And the chaplain forthwith monopolized the conversation, and no one else could get a word in. Hereon the cripple shot the pellets of goat's dung one by one, like flies, through the slit in the curtain right into the chaplain's gullet. And the brahmin swallowed the pellets down as they came, like so much oil, till all had disappeared. When the whole peashooter-full of pellets was lodged in the chaplain's stomach, they swelled to the size of half a peck; and the King, knowing they were all gone, addressed the brahmin in these words: "Reverend sir, so talkative are you, that you have swallowed down a peashooter-full of goat's dung without noticing it. That's about as much as you will be able to take at a sitting. Now go home and take a dose of panick seed and water by way of emetic, and put yourself right again."

From that day [420] the chaplain kept his mouth shut and sat as silent during conversation as though his lips were sealed.

"Well, my ears are indebted to the cripple for this relief," said the King, and bestowed on him four villages, one in the North, one in the South, one in the West, and one in the East, producing a hundred thousand a year.

The Bodhisatta drew near to the King and said, "In this world, sire,

skill should be cultivated by the wise. Mere skill in aiming has brought this cripple all this prosperity." So saying he uttered this stanza:--

Prize skill, and note the marksman lame;
--Four villages reward his aim.

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His lesson ended, the Master identified the Birth by saying, "This Brother was the cripple of those days, Ananda the King, and I the wise courtier."

Footnotes

^249:1 The modern Rapti, in Oudh.

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