No. 28. — 1884.] first fifty jAtakas. 



161 



c an I throw it?" While he was thus considering, he saw a field 

 where there had been a 'burn'; he raked open the ashes, and threw 

 out the porridge there, covered it over with ashes, and went to 

 the residence. Not seeing that mendicant, he said to himself, 

 "Doubtless that mendicant of mortified desires must have per- 

 ceived my intention, and gone to some other place ; alas ! for my 

 belly's sake I have done a wicked deed ! " Thus, from that 

 .moment great sorrow came upon him. Very soon after he became 

 a goblin in human form, and not long after died, and was born in 

 hell. For many thousand years he was maturing* in torment in 

 hell, and after he had reaped the fruit of his sin, by force of the 

 demerit that still remained, he was born a demon for five hundred 

 successive births. During that time, not one day did he get a bellyful 

 of food. One day he got a meal of filth. f Then for five hundred 

 births he was a dog. There, too, one day he got a meal of disgust- 

 ing food. But the rest of all that time he did not get one good 

 meal. On emerging from the dog existence, he was born in a 

 village in Kasi, in a poverty-stricken family. After his birth that 

 family was reduced to the extremity of misery. He never got 

 more than half a meal of some water gruel. His name was Mitta- 

 vindaka. His father and mother, unable to bear the misery of 

 starvation, J said " Get along, wretch," and beat him and sent him 

 away. Helpless (and friendless) he wandered till he came to 

 Benares. At that time the Bodhisat was a far-famed professor in 

 Benares, and was teaching § five hundred youths. In those days 

 the inhabitants of Benares used to pay for the education of the poor. 

 So this Mittavindaka was receiving a free education under the 

 Bodhisat. He was rude and impatient of reproof (or advice), and 

 went about striking first one and then another (boy), and when 

 reproved by the Bodhisat, would not take reproof (or advice), fco 

 that because of him the fees fell off. After a quarrel with the 

 other boys, refusing reproof, he ran away from the place, and 

 wandered to a country- village where he lived by doing jobs for 

 ! hire. There he lived with a poor woman who bore him two sons. 

 The villagers invited Mittavindaka to teach them about right and 

 wrong, and gave him a salary and a hut to live in at the entrance 

 of the village. Because of this Mittavindaka, the inhabitants of 



* I cannot represent in English the play on the cognate ideas of roasting- 

 ripening, and maturing, which are here implied in Paccati. 



t I have softened for the English reader the rude force of vdarapuram, gab- 

 bhainalam, vamanabhattam, ndbhito uddham, 8fc. 



X Jdtakadukkham. Read Chdtakad. 



§ Vdcesi. B. would prefer Vdceti. 



