11. Lust Of Taste

Once upon a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares he had a gardener named Sanjaya. A Wind-antelope came into the king’s pleasaunce, which fled away at the sight of Sanjaya, but the latter let it go without terrifying the timid creature. After several visits the antelope used to roam about in the pleasaunce. Sanjaya was in the habit of gathering flowers and fruits and taking them day by day to the king. One day the king said to him, “Have you noticed anything strange in the pleasaunce?” “Sir! that a wind-antelope has come about the grounds.”

The king asked him,“Could you catch it?”

Sanjaya said,“Oh! yes; if I had a little honey, I’d bring it right into your majesty’s palace.”

The king ordered the honey to be given to the Sanjaya and he went off to the grassy ground where the antelope roams about. He anointed grass with the honey, and then hid himself. When the antelope came and tasted the honied grass it was so snared by the lust of taste that it would go nowhere else but only to the pleasance. On seeing Sanjaya, the antelope try to ran away for a day or two. Then it became friendly. It gathered confidence and gradually came to eat grass from the Sanjaya’s hand. After winning the antelope’s confidence, Sanjaya first strewed the path as thick as a carpet with broken boughs; then he carried a pot of honey to his shoulder. Sanjaya started sprinkling the honey on the pathway leading to the hall in palace. Soon, the antelope was in fear and trembling for its life, dashed to and fro about the hall.

The king coming down from his chamber above, and seeing the trembling creature, said, “So timid! The Wind-antelope will not revisit a spot where it has seen a man; and if it has once been frightened anywhere, it never goes back there again all its life long. Yet, ensnared by the lust of taste, this wild thing from the jungle has actually come to a place like this. There is nothing viler in the world than this lust of taste.”

And with these words he let the antelope go back to its forest again.

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