The man was all forlorn. "There is no refuge for me," he thought, "except my teacher. To him I will go, and win his pardon, and learn the charm again." So lamenting he went on his way to that village. [206] The Great Being perceived him coming, and pointed him out to his wife, saying, "See, lady, there comes that scoundrel again, with his charm lost and gone!" The man approached the Great Being, and greeted him, and sat on one side. "Why are you here?" asked the other. "O my teacher!" the man said, "I uttered a lie, and denied my teacher, and I am utterly ruined and undone!" Then he recited his transgression in a stanza, asking again for the charms:

"Oft he who thinks the level ground is lying at his foot,
Falls in a pool, pit, precipice, trips on a rotten root;
Another treads what seems a cord, a jet-black snake to find;
Another steps into the fire because his eyes are blind:
So I have sinned, and lost my spell; but you, O teacher wise,
Forgive! and let me once again find favour in your eyes!"

Then his teacher replied, "What say you, my son? Give but a sign to the blind, he goes me clear of pools and what not; but I told it to you once, and what do you want here now?" Then he repeated the following stanzas:

"To you in right due manner I did tell,
You in due manner rightly learnt the spell,
Full willingly its nature I explained:
Ne'er had it left you, had you acted well.

[207] "Who with much toil, O fool! hath learnt a spell
Full hard for those who now in this world dwell,
Then, foolish one! a living gained at last,
Throws all away, because he lies will tell,

"To such a fool, unwise, of lying fain,
Ungrateful, who can not himself restrain,--
Spells, quotha! mighty spells we give not him:
Go hence away, and ask me not again!"

Thus dismissed by his teacher, the man thought, "What is life to me?" and plunging into the woods, died forlorn.

The Master having made an end of this discourse, said, "Not now only, Brother, has Devadatta denied his teacher, and come to dire destruction;" and so saying, he identified the Birth: "At that time Devadatta was the ungrateful man, Ananda was the king, and I was the low caste man."

Footnotes

^124:1 See No. 178, and note on p. 55 of vol. ii. of this translation.

^124:2 See l.c. note 2.

^127:1 Butea Frondosa. As Plassey was named from this tree, it is perhaps admissible as a name of the tree.