The Life or Legend of Gaudama, the Buddha of the Burmese (Volume II)Bigandet, Paul Ambroise
Religion
The Life or Legend of Gaudama, the Buddha of the Burmese (Volume II)
Bigandet, Paul Ambroise
Buddhism -- Burma; Burma -- Religion; Gautama Buddha
lightning, was on the wall, and straightway he went to the stable. The
bowman said within himself: “The lion’s movements are very quick; I will
wait until he come back loaded with his prey.” He had scarcely revolved
this thought in his mind, when the lion was already on his way back
carrying a horse. The bowman, all ready, shot an arrow that transfixed
the fierce animal. The lion made a start, crying with a terrific voice,
“I am wounded.” The fox, hearing his friend’s accents, and the sharp
whistling of the bow-string, knew at once what had happened. He said to
himself, shaking his head: “There is no friendship, forsooth, with the
dead; my friend has fallen under the bowman’s arrow; my life is safe; I
will go back to my former place.”
The wounded lion, making a last effort, went back to his den, and dropped
dead at its entrance.
Menandza’s relatives, perceiving the wound and the blood gushing out of
it, understood at once that he had been shot through with an arrow, and
that the fox was the cause of his miserable and untimely end. His mother
gave vent to her grief as follows: “Whoever associates with the wicked
shall not live long; behold my Menandza is no more, because he followed
the fox’s advice.” The father, in his turn, bewailed the loss of his
son: “He who goes in company with the wicked shall meet with some evil
fate; witness my son, whom his desolate mother sees weltering in the very
blood she gave him.” His sister cried aloud: “He who does not follow the
advice of the good shall repent of it; he is mad, and, like my brother,
shall come to an untimely and cruel end.” Menandza’s wife exclaimed: “He
who belongs to a superior rank ought to beware to associate with those
of a rank inferior to his own, otherwise he soon becomes as despicable
as those he associates with. He loses his position, and becomes the
laughing-stock of all.”
Buddha concluded his discourse with this reflection, that no one ought
to keep company with those that are wicked and of an inferior position.
The religious profited so well by the lecture that he broke at once with
his former friends, and soon reached the state of Thautapan. The fox has
been since Dewadat, Menandza, the religious, the object of the lecture,
Menandza’s sister, Oopalawon; his wife, Kema; his mother, Yathaudara; his
father, Phralaong.
_THE JACKAL AND THE HUNTER._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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