Category Archives: INDIA
113. The Bodhisatta – Treasurer
Once on a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares in Kasi, the Bodhisatta was born into the Treasurer’s family. Growing up, He was made Treasurer, being called Treasurer Little. He was a wise and clever man with a keen eye for signs and omens. One day on his way to wait upon the king, he came on a dead mouse lying on the road; and, taking note of the position of the stars at that moment, he said, “Any decent young fellow with his wits about him has only to pick that mouse up, and he might start a business and keep a wife.”
112. The Bodhisatta – The Stag
Once upon a time in the city of Rajagaha in the kingdom of Magadha there ruled a certain king of Magadha, in whose days the Bodhisatta came to life as a stag. Growing up, he dwelt in the forest as the leader of a herd of a thousand deer. He had two young ones named Leader and Blackie. When he grew old, he handed his charge over to his two sons, placing five hundred deer under the care of each of them. And so now these two young stags were in charge of the herd.
111. The Bodhisatta – The Wise Carpenter
Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was king of Benares, there stood near Benares a great town of carpenters, containing a thousand families. The carpenters from this town used to profess that they would make a bed, or a chair, or a house, and after receiving a large advance from men’s hands, they proved able to make nothing whatever. The people used to upbraid every carpenter they met with, and interfered with them. So those debtors were so much harassed that they could live there no longer. “Let us go into some foreign land,” said they, “and find some place or other to dwell in;” so to the forest they went.
110. The Bodhisatta – The Monkey King
There was a thick forest. A lake was there in the forest. A water-ogre lived in it. It used to devour everyone who went down into the water.
In those days the Bodhisatta had come to life as the king of the monkeys. He was as big as the fawn of a read deer. He lived in that forest as the head of eighty thousand monkeys; he shielded them from harm. He counselled his subjects:- “My friends, in this forest there are trees that are poisonous and lakes that are haunted by ogres. Mind to ask me first before you either eat any fruit which you have not eaten before, or drink of any water where you have not drunk before .”
