No. 147.

PUPPHARATTA-JATAKA.

"I count it not as pain."--This story was told by the Master while at Jetavana, about a Brother who was passion-tost. Being questioned by the Master, he admitted his frailty, explaining that he longed for the wife of his mundane life, "For, oh sir!" said he, "she is so sweet a woman that I cannot live without her."

"Brother," said the Master, "she is harmful to you. She it was that in former days was the means whereby you were impaled on a stake; and it was for bewailing her at your death that you were reborn in hell. Why then do you now long after her?" And so saying, he told the following story of the past.

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Once on a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born a Spirit of the Air. Now in Benares there was held the night-festival of Kattika; the city was decorated like a city of the gods, and the whole people kept holiday. And a poor man had only a couple of coarse cloths which he had washed and pressed till they were in a hundred, nay, a thousand creases. But his wife said, "My husband, I want

a safflower-coloured cloth to wear outside and one to wear underneath, as I go about at the festival hanging round your neck."

"How are poor people like us to get safflowers?" said he. "Put on your nice clean attire and come along."

"If I can't have them dyed with safflower, I don't want to go at all," said his wife. "Get some other woman to go to the festival with you."

"Now why torment me like this? How are we to get safflowers?"

"Where there's a will, there's a way," retorted the woman. "Are there no safflowers in the king's conservatories?" [500]

"Wife," said he, "the king's conservatories are like a pool haunted by an ogre. There's no getting in there, with such a strong guard on the watch. Give over this fancy, and be content with what you've got."

"But when it's night-time and dark," said she, "what's to stop a man's going where he pleases?"