say, will speak of the faults of womenkind: I too must listen to his exposition," and accompanied by a thousand ascetics he travelled thither by his supernatural power and sat on one side apart. There was a great gathering like that which assembles to hear the teaching of Buddhas. Then the Great Being, with the knowledge of one who remembers his former births, making Punnamukha a personal witness, related a circumstance seen in a former existence, connected with the faults of women. The Master, making the matter clear, said: Then the bird Kunala thus addressed the cuckoo Punnamukha, who had recently been raised up from a bed of sickness: "Friend Punnamukha, I have seen Kanha, her that had a double parentage and five husbands , and whose affection was set upon a sixth man, a headless , crippled dwarf." Here too we have a further verse:

In ancient story Kanha, it is said,
A single maid to princes five was wed,
Insatiate still she lusted for yet more
And with a hump-backed dwarf she played the whore.

"I have seen, friend Punnamukha, the case of a female ascetic named Saccatapavi, who dwelt in a cemetery and gave away even a fourth meal. She sinned with a goldsmith. I witnessed too, friend Punnamukha, the case of Kakati , the wife of Venateyya, who dwelt in the midst of the sea and yet sinned with Natakuvera. I have seen, friend Punnamukha, the fairhaired Kurangavi [425], who though in love with Elakamara sinned with Chalangakumara and Dhanantevasi. This too was known to me, how the mother of Brahmadatta, forsaking the king of Kosala, sinned with Pancalacanda. These and other women went wrong, and one should not put trust in women nor praise them. As the earth is impartially affected towards all the world, bearing wealth for all, a home for all sorts and conditions of men (good and bad alike), all-enduring, unshaken, immovable, so also is it with women (in a bad sense). A man should not trust them.

As lion fed upon raw flesh and blood,
With his five paws fierce ravening for food,
In others' hurt will his chief pleasure find--
Such like are women. Man, beware their kind.

Verily, friend Punnamukha, these creatures are not mere harlots, wenches or street-walkers, they are not so much strumpets as murderesses

[paragraph continues] --I mean these harlots, wenches, and street-walkers . They are like unto robbers with braided locks, like a poisoned drink, like merchants that sing their own praises, crooked like a deer's horn, evil-tongued like snakes, like a pit that is covered over, insatiate as hell, as hard to satisfy as a she-ogre, like the all-rapacious Yama, all-devouring like a flame, sweeping all before it as a river, like the wind going where it lists, undiscriminating like mount Neru , fruiting perennially like a poison tree." Here too occurs a further verse: