No. 28. — 1884.] fie st fifty jatakas. 



167 



bamboo-joint. When he returned with the ascetics at the end of 

 the two or three days, he opened the bamboo-joint to give 

 " Bamboo-boy" some food, and said " Come my son, you must be 

 starving," and put out his hand. The poisonous snake, infuriated 

 by being two or three days without food, bit the outstretched 

 hand and killed the ascetic on the spot, and went into the forest. 

 The ascetics seeing it, told the Bddhisat. The Bodhisat, after 

 performing the funeral rites, took his seat in the midst of the 

 hermit band, and uttered this stanza by way of warning to the 

 hermits :— 



" He who will not attend 

 To the words of a friend, 

 Will lie a murdered corpse some day 

 As ' Bamboo-boy's father' lay." 



The Bodhisat, after giving this advice to the hermits, practised 

 the four elements of saintly living, till, at the end of his appointed 

 time, he was born in the Brahma world. 



The teacher, after relating this religious discourse on the words 

 " This is not the first time, mendicant, you have been obstinate ; 

 in a former existence, too, by obstinacy you came to rottenness at 

 a serpent's mouth," established the connection and summed up 

 the birth-story by saying : 6e At that time i Bamboo-boy's father' 

 was the obstinate mendicant ; the rest of the train were the 

 Buddha's train ; the teacher of the band was I myself." 



(End of " Bamboo-Boy" Birth-Story.) 



44.— MAKASA-JA'TAKA. 



" Mosquito" Birth- Story. 



" Better a Wise Foe," fyc. 

 This the teacher told when he was on circuit in Magadha in a 

 certain village, on occasion of some village simpletons. The 

 Buddha (Tathagata), they say, once went from Savatthi to Ma- 

 gadha, and as he was going his rounds in that country he came 

 upon a certain village. This village was full, almost without 

 exception, of simpletons. One day these simpletons met together 

 and took counsel thus : " Friends, when we go into the forest 

 mosquitoes bite us while we are at work, and this interferes with 

 our work : let us all take bows and weapons, and make war on 

 the mosquitoes till we have shot dead or cut to pieces every mos- 

 quito." So they went to the forest, and in trying to shoot the 

 mosquitoes shot and struck and injured one another, so that they 

 came back and lay, some in the inner part of the village, some 



