Well, Sir king of goats, you fully know my great stupidity:
But how Senaka is stupid, prithee do explain to me.

The goat explaining this spoke the fifth stanza:

He who his own special treasure on his wife will throw away,
Cannot keep her faithful ever and his life he must betray.

The king hearing his words said, "King of goats, you will surely act for my advantage: tell me now what is right for me to do." Then the goat said, "King, to all animals no one is dearer than self: it is not good [280] to destroy oneself and abandon the honour one has gained for the sake of anything that is dear": so he spoke the sixth stanza:--

A king, like thee, may have conceived desire
And yet renounced it if his life's the cost:
Life is the chief thing: what can man seek higher?
If life's secured, desires need ne'er be crossed.

So the Bodhisatta exhorted the king. The king, delighted, asked, "King of goats, whence come you?" "I am Sakka, O king, come to save you from death out of pity for you." "King of gods, I promised to give her the charm: what am I to do now?" "There is no need for the ruin of both of you: you say, "It is the way of the craft," and have her beaten with some blows: by this means she will not get it." The king said, "It is well," and agreed. The Bodhisatta after exhortation to the king went to Sakka's heaven. The king went to the garden, had the queen summoned and then said, "Lady, will you have the charm?" "Yes, lord." "Then go through the usual custom." "What custom?" "A hundred stripes [281] on the back, but you must not make a sound." She consented through greed for the charm. The king made his slaves take whips and beat her on both sides. She endured two or three stripes and then cried, "I don't want the charm." The king said, "You would have killed me to get the charm," and so flogging the skin off her back he sent her away. After that she could not bear to talk of it again.

At the end of the lesson the Master declared the Truths, and identified the Birth:--at the end of the Truths, the Brother was established in the First Path:--"At that time the king was the discontented brother, the queen his former wife, the steed Sariputta, and Sakka was myself."

Footnotes

^174:1 For variants on this story see Benfey in Orient and Occident, vol. ii. pp. 133 ff., and the second story in the Arabian Nights.