Buddhist birth stories; or, Jataka tales, Volume 1
Religion
Buddhist birth stories; or, Jataka tales, Volume 1
Jataka stories, English
When the king had listened to this discourse, he was satisfied again;
and taking leave, he returned to the palace. And the disciple, too,
took his leave, and returned to the Himālaya region. But the Bodisat
dwelt there in continued meditation till he died, and he was then
reborn in the Brahma heaven.
* * * * *
When the Teacher had preached this discourse, and told the two stories,
he established the connexion, and summed up the Jātaka as follows:
“The pupil of that time was Bhaddiya the Elder, but the Master of the
company of disciples was I myself.”[278]
END OF THE STORY ON A HAPPY LIFE.
CHAPTER II. SĪLAVAGGA.
No. 11.
LAKKHAṆA JĀTAKA.
The Story of ‘Beauty.’
“_The advantage is to the good._”--This the Master told while at the
Bambu-grove near Rājagaha, about Devadatta.[279] For on one occasion,
when Devadatta asked for the Five Rules,[280] and could not get what he
wanted, he made a schism in the Order, and taking four hundred of the
mendicants with him, went and dwelt at the rock called Gayā-sīsa.
Afterwards the minds of these mendicants became open to conviction. And
the Master, knowing it, said to his two chief disciples, “Sāriputta!
those five hundred pupils of yours adopted the heresy of Devadatta, and
went away with him, but now their minds have become open to conviction.
Do you go there with a number of the brethren, and preach to them, and
instruct them in the Fruits of the Path of Holiness, and bring them
back with you!”
They went, and preached to them, and instructed them in the Fruits,
and the next day at dawn returned to the Bambu Grove, bringing those
mendicants with them. And as Sāriputta on his return was standing by,
after paying his respects to the Blessed One, the mendicants exalted
him, saying to the Blessed One, “Lord! how excellent appears our
elder brother, the Minister of Righteousness, returning with five
hundred disciples as his retinue, whereas Devadatta is now without any
followers at all!”
“Not only now, O mendicants! has Sāriputta come in glory, surrounded by
the assembly of his brethren; in a former birth, also, he did the same.
And not now only has Devadatta been deprived of his following; in a
former birth also he was the same.”
The monks requested the Blessed One to explain how that was. Then the
Blessed One made manifest a thing hidden by the interval of existence.
* * * * *
Long ago, in the city Rājagaha, in the land of Magadha, there ruled
a certain king of Magadha. At that time the Bodisat came to life as
a deer, and when he grew up he lived in the forest at the head of a
herd of a thousand deer. He had two young ones, named Lakkhaṇa (the
Beautifully-marked One, ‘Beauty’) and Kāḷa (the Dark One, ‘Brownie’).
When he had become old, he called them, and said, “My beloved! I am
old. Do you now lead the herd about.” And he placed five hundred of the
deer under the charge of each of his sons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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