These words made the Geese angry. Their first thought was "Let us drop him here, and leave him!" But then again they bethought them--"What will our father say!" So for fear of rebuke, they brought the creature to their father, and recounted all that he had done. The father grew angry when he heard it: "What!" said he, "are you my sons' superior, that you make yourself master over them, and treat them like horses in a carriage? You don't know your measure. This is no place for you; get you back to your mother!" And with this censure he repeated the second stanza:

"Dingy, my dear, there's danger here; this is no place for you;
By village gates your mother waits--there you must hasten too."

With this censure, he bade his sons convey the bird to the dunghill outside the city of Mithila; and so they did.

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This lesson ended, the Master identified the Birth: "Devadatta in those days was Dingy, the two Elders were the two young Geese, Ananda was the father Goose, and I was king Videha myself."

Footnotes

^26:1 Sariputta and Moggallana. See Cullavagga, vii. 4 (trans. in Vinaya Texts, iii. 256 ff.).

^26:2 A mountain near Gaya in Behar. It is now called Brahmayoni (see Rajendralala Mitra, Buddha Gaya, p. 23).

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