The king did so;--with the result that each several dog, as he drank, vomited. And they all brought up bits of leather! "Why it is like a judgment of a Perfect Buddha himself," cried the king overjoyed, and he did homage to the Bodhisatta by offering him the royal umbrella. But the Bodhisatta taught the Truth in the ten stanzas on righteousness in the Te-sakuna Jataka , beginning with the words:--

Walk righteously, great king of princely race.

Then having established the king in the Five Commandments, and having exhorted his majesty to be steadfast, the Bodhisatta handed back to the king the white umbrella of kingship.

At the close of the Great Being's words, [178] the king commanded that the lives of all creatures should be safe from harm. He ordered that all dogs from the Bodhisatta downwards, should have a constant supply of food such as he himself ate; and, abiding by the teachings of the Bodhisatta, he spent his life long in charity and other good deeds, so that when he died he was re-born in the Deva Heaven. The 'Dog's Teaching' endured for ten thousand years. The Bodhisatta also lived to a ripe old age, and then passed away to fare according to his deserts.

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When the Master had ended this lesson, and had said, "Not only now, Brethren, does the Buddha do what profits his kindred; in former times also he did the like,"--he shewed the connexion, and identified the Birth by saying,

"Ananda was the king of those days, the Buddha's followers were the others, and I myself was the dog."

Footnotes

^58:2 No. 465.

^60:1 No. 521.

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