No. 407.

MAHAKAPI-JATAKA.

"You made yourself," etc.--The Master told this while dwelling in Jetavana, concerning good works towards one's relatives. The occasion will appear in the Bhaddasala Birth . They began talking in the Hall of Truth, saying, "The supreme Buddha does good works towards his relatives." [370] When the Master had asked and been told their theme, he said, "Brethren, this is not the first time a Tathagata has done good works towards his relatives," and so he told a tale of old time.

Once upon a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born of a monkey's womb. When he grew up and attained stature and stoutness, he was strong and vigorous, and lived in the Himalaya with a retinue of eighty thousand monkeys. Near the Ganges bank there was a mango tree (others say it was a banyan), with branches and forks, having a deep shade and thick leaves, like a mountaintop. Its sweet fruits, of divine fragrance and flavour, were as large as waterpots: from one branch the fruits fell on the ground, from one into the Ganges water, from two into the main trunk of the tree. The Bodhisatta, while eating the fruit with a troop of monkeys, thought, "Someday danger will come upon us owing to the fruit of this tree falling on the water"; and so, not to leave one fruit on the branch which grew over the water, he made them eat or throw down the flowers at their season from the time they were of the size of a chick-pea. But notwithstanding, one ripe fruit, unseen by the eighty thousand monkeys, hidden by an ant's nest, fell into the river, and stuck in the net above the king of Benares, who was bathing for amusement with a net above him and another below. When the king had amused himself all day and was going away in the evening, the fishermen, who were drawing the net, saw the fruit and not knowing what it was, shewed it to the king. The king asked, "What is this fruit?" "We do not know, sire." "Who will know?"The foresters, sire." He had the foresters called, and learning from them that it was a mango, he cut it with a knife, and first making the foresters eat of it, he ate of it himself [371] and had some of it given to his seraglio and his ministers. The flavour of the ripe mango remained pervading the king's whole body. Possessed by desire of the flavour, he asked the foresters where that tree stood, and hearing that it was on a river bank in the