Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/287

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4. — CHULLAKA THE TREASURER.
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gratitude, he took a hundred thousand and went to Chullaka the treasurer. Then the treasurer asked him, "What have you been doing, my good man, to get all this wealth?"

"It was by adhering to what you said that I have acquired it within four months," said he: and told him the whole story, beginning with the dead mouse.

And when Chullaka the high treasurer heard his tale, he thought, "It will never do to let such a lad as this get into any one else's hands." So he gave him his grown-up daughter in marriage, and made him heir to all the family estates. And when the treasurer died, he received the post of city treasurer. But the Bodisat passed away according to his deeds.


It was when the Buddha had finished his discourse that he, as Buddha, uttered the following verse:

As one might nurse a tiny flame, The able and far-seeing man. E'en with the smallest capital. Can raise himself to wealth!


It was thus the Blessed One made plain what he had said, "Mendicants! Little Roadling has now through me become great in religion; but formerly through me he became great in riches."

When he had thus given this lesson, and told the double story, he made the connexion, and summed up the Jātaka by concluding, "He who was then Chullaka's pupil was Little Roadling, but Chullaka the high treasurer was I myself."


END OF THE STORY OF CHULLAKA THE TREASURER.