When the Bodhisatta had thus explained the matter, the foolish sprite notwithstanding did not lay it to heart, but one day assumed an awful shape, and drove away the lion and tiger. The people, no longer seeing the footmarks of these, divined that the lion and tiger must have gone to another wood, and cut down one side of this wood. Then the sprite came up to the Bodhisatta [358] and said to him,

"All, friend, I did not do as you said, but drove the creatures away; and now men have found out that they are gone, and they are cutting down the wood! What is to be done?" The reply was, that they were

gone to live in such and such a wood; the sprite must go and fetch them back. This the sprite did; and, standing in front of them, repeated the third stanza, with a respectful salute:

"Come back, O Tigers! to the wood again,
And let it not be levelled with the plain;
For, without you, the axe will lay it low;
You, without it, for ever homeless go."

This request they refused, saying, "Go away! we will not come." The sprite returned to the forest alone. And the men after a very few

(lays cut down all the wood, made fields, and brought them under cultivation.

When the sprite had ended this discourse, he declared the Truths and identified the Birth:--"Kokalika was then the foolish Sprite, Sariputta the Lion, Moggallana the Tiger, and the wise Sprite was I myself."

Footnotes

^244:1 Kokalika was a follower of Devadatta.

^244:2 No. 481.

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