Once on a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was a sea-sprite. Now a crow with his mate came down in quest of food to the sea-shore [498] where, just before, certain persons had been offering to the Nagas a sacrifice of milk, and rice, and fish, and meat and strong drink and the like. Up came the crow and with his mate ate freely of the elements of the sacrifice, and drank a great deal of the spirits. So they both got very drunk. Then they wanted to disport themselves in the sea, and were trying to swim on the surf, when a wave swept the hen-crow out to sea and a fish came and gobbled her up.

"Oh, my poor wife is dead," cried the crow, bursting into tears and lamentations. Then a crowd of crows were drawn by his wailing to the spot to learn what ailed him. And when he told them how his wife had been carried out to sea, they all began with one voice to lament. Suddenly the thought struck them that they were stronger than the sea and that all they had to do was to empty it out and rescue their comrade! So they set to work with their bills to empty the sea out by mouthfuls, betaking themselves to dry land to rest so soon as their throats were sore with the salt water. And so they toiled away till their mouths and jaws were dry and inflamed and their eyes bloodshot, and they were ready to drop for weariness. Then in despair they turned to one another and said that it was in vain they laboured to empty the sea,

for no sooner had they got rid of the water in one place than more flowed in, and there was all their work to do over again; they would never succeed in baling the water out of the sea. And, so saying, they uttered this stanza:--

Our throats are tired, our mouths are sore;
The sea refilleth evermore.

Then all the crows fell to praising the beauty of her beak and eyes, her complexion, figure and sweet voice, saying that it was her excellencies that had provoked the sea to steal her from them. But [499] as they talked this nonsense, the sea-sprite made a bogey appear from the sea and so put them all to flight. In this wise they were saved.

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His lesson ended, the Master identified the Birth by saying, "The aged Brother's wife was the hen-crow of those days, and her husband the male crow; the other aged Brethren were the rest of the crows, and I the sea-sprite."

Footnotes

^311:1 Buddhism combined reverence for age with mild contempt for aged novices who, after a mundane life, vouchsafed the selvage of their days and faculties to a creed only to be mastered by hard thinking and ardent zeal.

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