No. 12.

NIGRODHAMIGA-JATAKA.

"Keep only with the Banyan Deer."--This story was told by the Master while at Jetavana about the mother of the Elder named Prince Kassapa. The daughter, we learn, of a wealthy merchant of Rajagaha was deeply rooted in goodness and scorned all temporal things; she had reached her final existence, and within her breast, like a lamp in a pitcher, glowed her sure hope of winning

[paragraph continues] Arahatship. As soon as she reached knowledge of herself, she took no joy in a worldly life but yearned to renounce the world. With this aim, she said to her mother and father, "My dear parents, my heart takes no joy in a worldly life; fain would I embrace the saving doctrine of the Buddha. Suffer me to take the vows."

"What, my dear? Ours is a very wealthy family, and you are our only daughter. You cannot take the vows."

Having failed to win her parents' consent, though she asked them again and again, she thought to herself, "Be it so then; when I am married into another family, I will gain my husband's consent and take the vows." And when, being grown up, she entered another family, she proved a devoted wife and lived a life of goodness and virtue in her new home. Now it came to pass that she conceived, though she knew it not.

There was a festival proclaimed in that city, [146] and everybody kept holiday, the city being decked like a city of the gods. But she, even at the height of the festival, neither anointed herself nor put on any finery, going about in her every-day attire. So her husband said to her, "My dear wife, everybody is holiday-making; but you do not put on your bravery."

"My lord and master," she replied, "the body is filled with two-and-thirty component .parts. Wherefore should it be adorned? This bodily frame is not of angelic or archangelic mould; it is not made of gold, jewels, or yellow sandal-wood; it takes not its birth from the womb of lotus-flowers, white or red or blue; it is not filled with any immortal balsam. Nay, it is bred of corruption, and born of mortal parents; the qualities that mark it are the wearing and wasting away, the decay and destruction of the merely transient; it is fated to swell a graveyard, and is devoted to lusts; it is the source of sorrow, and the occasion of lamentation; it is the abode of all diseases, and the repository of the workings of Karma. Foul within,--it is always excreting. Yea, as all the world can see, its end is death, passing to the charnel-house, there to be the dwelling-place of worms [147]. What should I achieve, my bridegroom, by tricking out this body? Would not its adornment be like decorating the outside of a close-stool?"

"My dear wife," rejoined the young merchant, "if you regard this body as so sinful, why don't you become a Sister?"