No. 322.

DADDABHA-JATAKA.

"From the spot where," etc.--This story was told by the Master, when he dwelt at Jetavana, about some heretics. These heretics, they say, in various places near Jetavana, made their beds on thorns, suffered the five-fold forms of fire penance, and practised false asceticism of many different kinds. Now a number of the Brethren, after going their rounds for alms in Savatthi, on their way back to Jetavana saw these heretics undergoing their pretended austerities, and came and asked the Master, [75] "Is there, Sir, any virtue in these heterodox priests in taking upon them these practices?" The Master said, "There is no

virtue, Brethren, nor any special merit in it. When it is examined and tested, it is like a path over a dunghill, or like the noise the hare heard." "We do not know, Sir, what that noise was. Tell us, Holy Sir." So at their request he told them an old-world legend.

Once upon a time when Brahmadatta reigned in Benares, the Bodhisatta came to life as a young lion. And when fully grown he lived in a wood. At this time there was near the Western Ocean a grove of palms mixed with vilva trees. A certain hare lived here beneath a palm sapling, at the foot of a vilva tree. One day this hare after feeding came and lay down beneath the young palm tree. And the thought struck him: "If this earth should be destroyed, what would become of me?" And at this very moment a ripe vilva fruit fell on a palm leaf. At the sound of it, the hare thought: "This solid earth is collapsing," and starting up he fled, without so much as looking behind him. Another hare saw him scampering off, as if frightened to death, and asked the cause of his panic flight. "Pray, don't ask me," he said. The other hare cried, "Pray, Sir, what is it?" and kept running after him. Then the hare stopped a moment and without looking back said, "The earth here is breaking up." And at this the second hare ran after the other. And so first one and then another hare caught sight of him running, and joined in the chase till one hundred thousand hares all took to flight together. They were seen by a deer, a boar, an elk, a buffalo, a wild ox, a rhinoceros, a tiger, a lion and an elephant. And when they asked what it meant and were told that the earth was breaking up, they too took to flight. [76] So by degrees this host of animals extended to the length of a full league.