Once upon a time, a wicked and unjust king named Maha pingala, the Great Yellow King, reigned at Benares. He ruled the kingdom sinfully after his own will and pleasure. With taxes and fines, and many mutilations and robberies, he crushed the folk as it were sugar cane in a mill; he was cruel, fierce, ferocious. For other people he had not a grain of pity; at home he was harsh and implacable towards his wives, his sons and daughters, to his Brahmin courtiers and the householders of the country. He was like a speck of dust that falls in the eye, like gravel in the broth, like a thorn sticking in the heel.

Now the Bodhisatta was a son of king Maha pingala. King Maha pingala ruled for a long time and died. When he died all the citizens of Benares were overjoyed; they burnt his body with a thousand cartloads of logs, and quenched the place of burning with thousands of jars of water, and consecrated the Bodhisatta to be king. They were happy that they had a righteous king. They celebrated that day with joy. The Bodhisatta sat upon a fine divan on a great raised dais, with a white parasol stretched above him. The courtiers and householders, the citizens and the doorkeepers stood around their king.

But one doorkeeper, standing not far from the king, was sighing and sobbing. The Bodhisatta asked, “Good Porter! all the people are making merry for joy that my father is dead, but you stand weeping. Was my father good and kind to you?”

The man answerd: “I am not weeping for sorrow that Pingala is dead. I am glad. Every time King Pingala came down from the palace, or went up into it, would give me eight blows over the head with his fist, like the blows of a blacksmith’s hammer. So when he goes down to the other world, he will give eight blows on the head of Yama, the gatekeeper of hell, as though he were striking me. If he sends King Pingala back, the people here will cry. He is too cruel for us! And will send him up again. And I fear he will come and give fisticuffs on my head again, and that is why I weep.”

Then the Bodhisatta said, “That king has been burnt with a thousand cartloads of wood; beings that have gone to the other world, except by force of fate, do not return to the same bodily shape as they had before; do not be afraid!”

After that, the porter was convinced. And the Bodhisatta ruled in righteousness; and after giving gifts and doing other good acts, he passed away to fare according to his deserts.