No. 482.

RURU-JATAKA.

"I bring you tidings," etc. This story the Master told while dwelling in the Bamboo-grove, about Devadatta. One might say to him, "The Master is most useful to you, friend Devadatta. You received holy orders from the Tathagata, from him you learnt the Three Baskets, you obtained gifts and honour." When such things were said, it is credibly reported he would reply, "No, friend; the Master has done me no good, not so much as a blade of grass is worth. Of myself I received holy orders, myself I learned the Three Baskets, by myself I gained gifts and honour." In the Hall of Truth the Brethren talked of all this: "Ungrateful is Devadatta, my friend, and forgets a kindness done." The Master came in, and would know what they talked of sitting there. They told him. Said he, "It is not now the first time, Brethren, that Devadatta is ungrateful, but ungrateful he was before; and in days long gone by his life was saved by me, yet he knew not the greatness of my merit." So saying, he told a story of the past.

Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was king of Benares, a great merchant who possessed a fortune of eighty crores, had a son born to him; and he gave him the name of Maha-dhanaka, or Moneyman. But never a thing he taught him; for said he, "My son will find study a weariness of the flesh." Beyond singing and dancing, eating and feasting, the lad knew nothing. When he came of age, his parents provided him with a wife meet for him, and afterwards died. After their death, the youth surrounded by profligates, drunkards, and dicers, [256] spent all his substance with all manner of waste and profusion. Then he borrowed money, and could not repay it, and was dunned by his creditors. At last he thought, "What is my life to me? In this one existence I am as it were already changed into another being; to die is better." Whereupon he said to his creditors, "Bring your bills, and come hither. I have a

family treasure laid up and buried on the bank of the Ganges, and you shall have that." They went along with him. He made as though he were pointing out here and there the hiding place of his treasure (but all the while he intended to fall into the river and drown), and finally ran and threw himself into the Ganges. As the torrent bore him away, he cried aloud with a pitiful cry.