The antelope knows well the fruit you drop.
I like it not; some other tree I'll seek .

Then the hunter from his platform hurled his javelin at the Bodhisatta, crying, "Begone! I've missed you this time." Wheeling round, the Bodhisatta halted and said, "You may have missed me, my good man; but depend upon it, you have not missed the reward of your conduct, namely, the eight Large and the sixteen Lesser hells and all the five forms of bonds and torture." With these words the antelope bounded off on its way; and the hunter, too, climbed down and went his way.

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When the Master had ended this discourse and had repeated what he had said about Devadatta's going about to slay him in bygone days also, he showed the connexion and identified the Birth, by saying, "Devadatta was the platform-hunter of those days, and I myself the antelope."

Footnotes

^57:1 See Vinaya, Cullavagga, VII. 3, for details of Devadatta's attempt to kill Gotama. In the Vinaya, the elephant is named Nalagiri.

^58:1 See Dhammapada, pp. 147, 331.

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