caring one bit; and when the bystanders cried shame upon him, returned to the lower state, and lost the faith!"
Then said the Teacher, "Not only, O monks, has this brother now lost the jewel of the faith by immodesty; in a former birth he lost a jewel of a wife from the same cause." And he told a tale.
Long ago, in the first age of the world, the quadrupeds chose the Lion as their king, the fishes the Leviathan, and the birds the Golden Goose.[1]
Now the royal Golden Goose had a daughter, a young goose most beautiful to see; and he gave her her choice of a husband. And she chose the one she liked the best.
For, having given her the right to choose, he called together all the birds in the Himālaya region. And crowds of geese, and peacocks, and other birds of various kinds, met together on a great flat piece of rock.
The king sent for his daughter, saying, "Come and choose the husband you like best!"
On looking over the assembly of the birds, she caught sight of the peacock, with a neck as bright as gems, and a many-coloured tail; and she made the choice with the words, "Let this one be my husband!"
So the assembly of the birds went up to the peacock, and said, "Friend Peacock! this king's daughter having to choose her husband from amongst so many birds, has fixed her choice upon you!"
- ↑ How this was done, and the lasting feud which the election gave rise to between the owl and the crow, is told at length in Jātaka No. 270. The main story in Book III. of the Pañca Tantra is founded on this feud.
