8 



Patiently lie underwent the most terrible tortures, without using 

 his enormous power against the puny rogues who caused him 

 so much pain. As Samkhapala he 'was freed by a passing mer- 

 chant, whom he thereupon treated as a guest in his palace for 

 a whole year, and who afterwards became aa ascetic. In the two 

 other cases, however, he fell into the hands of a snake-charmer, 

 who by means of magical herbs, which he spit upon him, and 

 by virtue of the "charm which commands all things of sense", 

 as well as by squeezing and crushing, weakened the royal snake, 

 and putting him in his basket carried him off to villages and 

 towns, where he made him dance before the public. In both 

 legends the Bodhisattva is just performing before the King of 

 Benares, when he is released on account of the appearance of 

 another Naga, Sumana, his queen, or Sudassana, his brother '. 



In the shape of a Garuda-king we find the Bodhisattva in 

 another tale ^, where he finds out the secret way by which the 

 Nagas often succeed in conquering and killing the Garudas, 

 namely by swallowing big stones and thus making themselves 

 so heavy that their assailants, striving to lift them up, drop 

 down dead in the midst of the streaxn of water, flowing out of 

 the Naga's widely opened mouths. Pandara, a Naga king, was 

 foolish enough to trust an ascetic, whom both he and the Garuda 

 used to visit and honour, and told him at his repeated request 

 the valuable, secret of the Naga tribe. The treacherous ascetic 

 revealed it at once to the Bodhisattva, who now succeeded in 

 capturing Pandara himself by seizing him by the. tail and holding 

 him upside down, so that he disgorged the stones he had swallowed 

 and was an easy prey. Moved by Pandara's lamentations, 

 however, he released him and they became friends, whereupon 

 they went" together to the perfidious ascetic. The Naga king 

 caused this fellow's head to split into seven pieces and the man 

 himself to be swallowed by the earth and to be reborn in the 

 Avici hell. 



In the Kharaputta-jataka ^ we read about a Naga king who 

 was nearly killed by boys, when seeking food on earth, but was 

 saved out of their hands by Senaka, king of Benares. We do 

 not read what made the mighty Naga so powerless against those 

 children ; for there was apparently no question of fasting as in 



1 A similar tale is to be found in Chayannes's Contes et apologues extraits du 

 Tripitaka chinois, Vol. I, pp. 189 sqq., nr 50. 



2 Vol. V, pp. 42 seqq., Book XVI, nr 518. 



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