Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/334

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14. — VĀTA-MIGA JĀTAKA.

nature of an antelope, that it will not go for a week afterwards to a place where it has seen men, nor its life long to a place where it has been frightened. Yet this one, with just such a disposition, and accustomed only to the jungle, has now, bound by the lust of taste, come to just such a place. Verily there is nothing worse in the world than this lust of taste!" And he summed up the lesson in this stanza:


"There's nothing worse than greed, they say, Whether at home, or with one's friends. Through taste the deer, the wild one of the woods. Fell under Sanjaya's control."


And when in other words he had shown the danger of greed, he let the antelope go back to the forest.


When the Master had finished this discourse in illustration of what he had said ("Not now only O mendicants! has this monk, caught by the lust of taste, fallen into her power; formerly also he did the same"), he made the connexion, and summed up the Jātaka as follows: "He who was then Sanjay a was this slave-girl, the antelope was the monk, but the king of Benares was I myself."


END OF THE STORY OF THE SWIFT ANTELOPE.