Category Archives: JATAKA TALES
12. Maha Pingala – The Tyrant
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.
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.”
10. Kassapa And Good Company
Once upon a time, in the days when Kassapa was Supreme Buddha, a disciple, who had entered on the Paths, took passage on board ship in company with a barber of some considerable property. The barber’s wife had given him in charge of our friend, to look after him in better and in worse.
9. KALINGA THE GREAT
Once upon a time, in the kingdom of Kalinga, and in the city of Dantapura, reigned a king named Kalinga. He had two sons, named Maha-Kalinga and Culla-Kalinga, kalinga the Greater and the Less. Now fortune-tellers had foretold that the eldest son would reign after his father’s death; but that the youngest would live as an ascetic, and live by alms, yet his son would be an universal monarch.
