"No penance have I, nor no charm and spell,
No demons ready to obey me well,
Nor any meed for service can I claim;
But we have met before, the truth to tell."

"I cannot call to mind, in time past o'er,
That I have ever seen thy face before.
Tell me, I beg thee, tell this thing to me,
When have we met, or where, in days of yore?"

"In the fair city of Gandhara's king,
Takkasila, my lord, was our dwelling.
There in the pitchy darkness of the night
Shoulder to shoulder thou and I did fling.

"And as we both were standing there, O prince,
A friendly talk between us straight begins.
Then we together met, and only then,
Nor ever once before, nor ever since."

"Whenever, brahmin, a wise man has met
A good man in the world, he should not let
Friendship once made or old acquaintance go
For nothing, nor the thing once done forget.

"'Tis fools deny the thing once done, and let
Old friendships fail of those they once have met.
Many a deed of fools to nothing comes,
They are ungrateful, and they can forget.

"But trusty men cannot forget the past,
Their friendship and acquaintance ever fast.
[99] A trifle done by such is not disowned:
Thus trusty men are grateful to the last.

"Five villages I give thee, choice and fine,
A hundred slave-girls, and seven hundred kine,
More than a thousand ornaments of gold,
And more, two wives of equal birth with thine."

"O king, thus is it when the good agree:
As the full moon among the stars we see,
Even so, O Lord of Kasi, so am I,
Now thou hast kept the bargain made with me."

[100] The Bodhisatta added great honour to him.

When the Master had ended this discourse, he said, "This is not the first time, Brethren, that I have satisfied Ananda with boons, but I have done it before." With these words, he identified the Birth: "At that time Ananda was the brahmin, and I was myself the king."

Footnotes

^61:1 R. Fick, Sociale Gliederung im Nordostlichen Indien zu Buddha's Zeit, p. 119.

^62:1 Are these the Five abhabbatthanas?

^63:1 Correct ii. 253. 19 to "jewelled goad"