The Woodpecker made all haste back to his friends. "Here comes the hunter!" he cried. By this time the Tortoise had gnawed through all the thongs but one tough thong: his teeth seemed as though they would fall out, and his mouth was all smeared with blood. The Bodhisatta saw the young hunter coming on like lightning, knife in hand: he burst the thong, and fled into the woods. The Woodpecker perched upon his tree-top. But the Tortoise was so weak, that he lay where he was. The hunter threw him into a bag, and tied it to a tree.

The Bodhisatta observed that the Tortoise was taken, and determined to save his friend's life. So he let the hunter see him, and made as though he were weak. The hunter saw him, and thinking him to be weak, seized his knife and set out in pursuit. The Bodhisatta, keeping just out of his reach, led him into the forest; and when he saw that they had come far away, gave him the slip and returned swift as the wind by another way. He lifted the bag with his horns, threw it upon the ground, ripped it open and let the Tortoise out. And the Woodpecker came down from the tree.

Then the Bodhisatta thus addressed them both: "My life has been saved by you, and you have done a friend's part to me. Now the hunter will come and take you; so do you, friend Woodpecker, migrate elsewhere with your brood, and you, friend Tortoise, dive into the water." They did so.

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The Master, becoming perfectly enlightened, uttered the second stanza:--[155]

"The Tortoise went into the pond, the Deer into the wood,
And from the tree the Woodpecker carried away his brood."

The hunter returned, and saw none of them. He found his bag torn; picked it up, and went home sorrowful. And the three friends lived all their life long in unbroken amity, and then passed away to fare according to their deeds.

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When the Master had ended this discourse, he identified the Birth:--"Devadatta was the huntsman, Sariputta the Woodpecker, Moggallana the Tortoise, and I was the Antelope."

Footnotes

^106:1 Figured on the Bharhut Stupa (Cunningham, p. 67, and pl. xxvii. 9).

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