No. 143.

VIROCANA-JATAKA.

"Your mangled corpse."--This story was told by the Master while at the Bamboo-grove, about Devadatta's efforts to pose as a Buddha at Gayasisa . For when his spiritual Insight left him and he lost the honour and profit which once were his, he in his perplexity asked the Master to concede the Five Points. This being refused, he made a schism in the Brotherhood and departed to Gayasisa with five hundred young Brethren, pupils of the Buddha's two chief disciples, but as yet unversed in the Law and the Rule. With this following he performed the acts of a separate Brotherhood gathered together within the same precincts. Knowing well the time when the knowledge of these young Brethren should ripen, the Master sent the two Elders to them. Seeing these, [491] Devadatta joyfully set to work expounding far into the night with (as he flattered himself) the masterly power of a Buddha. Then posing as a Buddha he said, "The assembly, reverend Sariputta, is still alert and sleepless. Will you be so good as to think of some religious discourse to address to the Brethren? My back is aching with my labours, and I must rest it awhile." So saying he went away to lie down. Then those two chief disciples taught the Brethren, enlightening them as to the Fruitions and the Paths, till in the end they won them all over to go back to the Bamboo-grove.

Finding the Monastery emptied of the Brethren, Kokalika went to Devadatta and told him how the two disciples had broken up his following and left the Monastery empty; "and yet here you still lie asleep," said he. So saying he stripped off Devadatta's outer cloth and kicked him on the chest with as little compunction as if he were knocking a roof-peg into a mud-wall. The blood gushed out of Devadatta's mouth, and ever after he suffered from the effects of the blow .

Said the Master to Sariputta, "What was Devadatta doing when you got there?" And Sariputta answered that, though posing as a Buddha, evil had befallen him. Said the Master, "Even as now, Sariputta, so in former times too has Devadatta imitated me to his own hurt." Then, at the Elder's request, he told this story of the past.

_____________________________