The grateful elephant : $b And other stories translated from the PāliBurlingame, Eugene Watson
Religion
The grateful elephant : $b And other stories translated from the Pāli
Burlingame, Eugene Watson
Buddhist legends
Now one day the crow pecked out both of the elephant’s eyes, and the
fly let a nit drop on them. The elephant, eaten up by maggots, maddened
with pain, overcome with thirst, wandered about seeking water to drink.
At that moment the frog, squatting on the mountain-top, let out a
croak. The elephant thought: “There must be water there;” and climbed
the mountain. Then the frog hopped down, and squatting at the bottom,
let out a croak. The elephant thought: “There must be water there.” And
going to the brink of the precipice, he tumbled and fell to the foot of
the mountain, and met destruction.
When the tiny quail realized that he was dead, she cried out: “I have
seen the back of my enemy!” And pleased and delighted, she strutted
over his shoulders, and passed away according to her deeds.
Behold the quail, the crow, the fly, the frog!
They slew the elephant! Behold the hatred of the haters!
_5. Quails and Fowler._
_In union there is strength._
Jātaka 33: i. 208-210.
Then said the Exalted One to those monks: “Monks, be united; do not
wrangle. For because of a wrangle many thousand quails lost their
lives.”
In times past, when Brahmadatta ruled at Benāres, the Future Buddha
was reborn as a quail, and lived in the forest with a retinue of many
thousand quails. At that time a certain quail-hunter used to go to the
haunt of the quails and attract them by imitating a quail’s whistle.
When he perceived that they had assembled, he would throw a net over
them and huddle them all together by trampling the edges. Then he would
fill his basket, go home, and sell them. Thus he made his living.
Now one day the Future Buddha said to those quails: “This fowler is
bringing our kinsfolk to destruction. I know a way by which he shall
not be able to catch us. From this time on, the moment he throws the
net over you, let each quail stick his head through a single mesh,
lift the net, and carrying it wherever you will, let it down on some
thorn-brake. This done, we can escape each through his own mesh.” They
all assented, saying, “Very well!”
When the net was thrown over them on the following day, they raised the
net precisely as the Future Buddha had told them to, dropped it on a
certain thorn-brake, and themselves escaped from under. Twilight came
on with the fowler still busy disentangling the net from the brake, and
he went away absolutely empty-handed. On the next day, and thereafter
also, the quails did the very same thing. The fowler also, busy every
moment until sunset disentangling the net, got nothing, and went home
absolutely empty-handed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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