No. 417.

KACCANI-JATAKA.

[422] "Robed in white," etc.--The Master told this tale while dwelling at Jetavana, concerning a man who supported his mother. The story is that the man was of good family and conduct in Savatthi: on his father's death he became devoted to his mother and tended her with the services of mouth-washing, teeth-cleansing, bathing, feet-washing and the like, and also by giving her gruel, rice and other food. She said to him, "Dear son, there are other duties in a householder's life: you must marry a maid of a suitable family, who will attend to me, and then you can do your proper work." "Mother, it is for my own good and pleasure that I wait on you: who else would wait on you so well?" "Son, you ought to do something to advance the fortune of our house." "I have no care for a householder's life; I will wait on you, and after you are dead and burned I will become an ascetic." She pressed him again and again: and at last, without winning him over or gaining his consent, she brought him a maid of a suitable family. He married and lived with her, because he would not oppose his mother. She observed the great attention with which her husband waited on his mother, and desirous of imitating it she too waited on her with care. Noticing his wife's devotion, he gave her thenceforth all the pleasant food he could get. As time went on she foolishly thought in her pride, "He gives me all the pleasant food he gets: he must be anxious to get rid [423] of his mother and I will find some means for doing so." So one day she said, "Husband, your mother scolds me when you leave the house." He said nothing. She thought, "I will irritate the old woman and make her disagreeable to her son": and thenceforth she gave her rice-gruel either very hot or very cold or very salt or saltless. When the old woman complained that it was too hot or too salt, she threw in cold water enough to fill the dish: and then on complaints of its being cold and saltless, she would make a great outcry, "Just now you said it was too hot and too salt: who can satisfy you?" So at the bath she would throw very hot water on the old woman's back: when she said, "Daughter, my back is burning," the other would throw some very cold water on her, and on complaints of this, she would make a story to the neighbours, "This woman said just now it was too hot, now she screams "it is too cold": who can endure her impudence?" If the old woman complained that her bed was full of fleas, she would take the bed out and shake her own bed over it and then bring it back declaring, "I've given it a shake": the good old lady, having twice as many fleas biting her