No. 28. — 1884.] fikst fifty jatakas. 



ATTHAKA'MA VAGGA. 



157 



41.— LO'SAKA-JA'TAKA. 



(i The Advice of a well-meaning Friend" 



This the teacher told while residing in Jetayana on occasion of 

 an elder named Ldsakatissa. This Losakatissa was a man of fisher 

 caste in Kosala, who had been the ruin of his own family, and 

 was now a luckless mendicant (to whom no one gave). On emerg- 

 ing from the scene of his last birth, he had assumed his present 

 existence, they say, in the womb of a certain fisherwoman in a 

 fisher village of a thousand families. On the day of his conception 

 these thousand families, net in hand, sought for fish in streams 

 and ponds and the like, but not one little fish did they catcb. 

 From that time these fishers kept declining. Between this and 

 his birth, their village was seven times burnt by fire, and seven 

 fined by the king. Thus, as time went on, they grew more and 

 more miserable. They thought : " Formerly it was not thus with 

 us, but now we are declining ; there must be some " ill-luck" 

 amongst us ; let us form two bands;" and so they separated into 

 five and five hundred families. Then the portion where his 

 parents were declined ; the other prospered. Then, on the prin- 

 ciple of halving that portion, and that again, and so on, they 

 divided until that family was left by itself ; and having thus 

 ascertained that the ill-luck was theirs, they beat them and turned 

 them out. 



Then his mother, living in hardship, when her offspring was 

 matured, brought him forth somewhere (where she could). 



A being in his last existence it is impossible to kill : the poten- 

 tiality of Kahatship burns in his heart like a lamp within a jar. 

 She nourished the child, and as soon as he could run about she 

 put a potsherd (or half a cocoanut, or whatever it might be) into 

 his hand and told the boy to go to some house, and went away. 

 Thenceforth, being quite alone, he sought alms there, and slept 

 where he could, never bathed, took no care of his person, and 

 passed his life in hardship like a dirt goblin. In course of time, 

 when he was seven years old, at a certain housVdoor in the place 

 where they throw away the washings of the rice-pot, he had 

 picked up a single lump of rice, and was eating it like a crow. 

 The lord of religion, as he went on his begging . rounds to 

 Savatthi, saw the child, and thinking, " This being is a great 

 object of compassion ; what village does he belong to ?" — kind- 

 ness growing in his heart towards him — said, " Come here, my 

 boy." He went and did obeisance to the elder, and stood still. 



