the fire with fuel, nor a king with his kingdom, nor a fool with sins, nor a woman with three things, intercourse, adornment and child-bearing, nor a brahmin with sacred texts, nor a sage with ecstatic meditation, nor a sekha with honour, nor one free from desire with penance, nor the energetic man with energy, nor the talker with talk, nor the politic man with the council, nor the believer with serving the church, nor the liberal man with giving away, nor the learned with hearing the law, nor the four congregations with seeing the Buddha. So this brahmin woman [343], being unsatisfied with intercourse, wished to put her husband away and do her sin with boldness. So one day in her evil purpose she lay down. When he said, "How is it, wife?" she answered, "Brahmin, I cannot do the work of your house, get me a maid." "Wife, I have no money, what shall I give to get her?" "Seek for money by begging for alms and so get her." "Then, wife, get ready something for my journey." She filled a skin-bag with baked meal and unbaked meal, and gave them to him. The brahmin, going through villages, towns and cities, got seven hundred pieces, and thinking, "This money is enough to buy slaves, male and female," he was returning to his own village: at a certain place convenient for water he opened his sack, and eating some meal he went down to drink water without tying the mouth. Then a black snake in a hollow tree, smelling the meal, entered the bag and lay down in a coil eating the meal. The brahmin came, and without looking inside fastened the sack and putting it on his shoulder went his way. Then a spirit living in a tree, sitting in a hollow of the trunk, said to him on the way, "Brahmin, if you stop on the way you will die, if you go home to-day your wife will die," and vanished. He looked, but not seeing the spirit was afraid and troubled with the fear of death, and so came to the gate of Benares weeping and lamenting. It was the fast on the fifteenth day, the day of the Bodhisatta's preaching, seated on the decorated seat of the law, and a multitude with perfumes and flowers and the like in their hands came in troops to hear the preaching. The brahmin said, "Where are ye going?" and was told, "O brahmin, to-day wise Senaka preaches the law with sweet voice and the power of a Buddha: do you not know?" He thought, "They say he is a wise preacher, and I am troubled with the fear of death: wise men [344] are able to take away even great sorrow: it is right for me too to go there and hear the law." So he went with them, and when the assembly and the king among them had sat down round about the Bodhisatta, he stood at the outside, not far from the seat of the law, with his mealsack on his shoulder, afraid with the fear of death. The Bodhisatta preached as if he were bringing down the river of heaven or showering ambrosia. The multitude became well pleased, and making applause listened to the