The man that looks at this world and the next,
Ne'er finds himself with love or hatred vext,
'Neath garb of self-restraint thou fain wouldst hide
But lawless acts that holy garb belied.

[87] Thou, seeming noble, art with meanness stained,
And, as ascetic clad, art unrestrained;
By nature with ignoble thoughts accurst,
Thou in all kinds of sinful act art versed.

So to reprove him, he uttered this stanza, reviling him:

Informer, traitor, that wouldst slay
A guileless friend, be thy head riven
By this my Act of Truth, I pray,
Piecemeal, all into fragments seven.

So before the very eyes of the snake-king, the head of the ascetic was split into seven pieces, and at the very spot where he was sitting the ground was cleft asunder. And, disappearing into the Earth, he was re-born in the Avici hell, and the snake-king and the garuda-king returned each to his own abode.

The Master, to make clear the fact that he had been swallowed up by the earth, repeated the last stanza:

Therefore I say, friends ne'er should treacherous be;
Than a false friend worse man is none to see.
Buried in earth the venomous creature lies,
And at the snake-king's word the ascetic dies.

[88] The Master here ended his discourse and said, "Not now only, Brethren, but of old too, Devadatta told a lie and was swallowed up by the earth," and he identified the Birth: "At that time the ascetic was Devadatta, the snake-king Sariputta, and the garuda-king was myself."

Footnotes

^42:1 Vol. vi. p. 329, Jataka, No. 546.

^43:1 The wind agitated by the wings of Garuda. Cf. Nagananda, Boyd's English version, p. 59: "Garuda was in the habit of devouring one snake daily, catching it up from hell, whilst the ocean was cleft asunder from top to bottom by the wind of his wings."