The trapper set to work to smoke the iguanas out; and fear for their lives drove them helter-skelter from their burrow. As they came out, the trapper knocked them on the head, and if he missed them, they fell a prey to his dogs. And so there was great slaughter among the iguanas. Realising that this was the chameleon's doing, the Bodhisatta cried, "One should never make friends of the wicked, for such bring sorrow in their train. A single wicked chameleon has proved the bane of all these iguanas." So saying, he escaped by the outlet he had provided, uttering this stanza:--

Bad company can never end in good.
Through friendship with one sole chameleon
The tribe of iguanas met their end.

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[489] His lesson ended, the Master identified the Birth by saying, "Devadatta was the chameleon of those days; this traitorous Brother was the disobedient young iguana, the son of the Bodhisatta; and I myself the king of the iguanas."

Footnotes

^302:1 No. .

^303:1 Makkhika may refer to the wings which the ants get in India at the beginning of the rainy season; cf. <page 297>.

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