Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/17

 The Ass in the Lion's Skin.

SĪHA-CAMMA JĀTAKA.

(Fausböll, No. 189.)

Once upon a time, while Brahma-datta was reigning in Benāres, the future Buddha was born one of a peasant family; and when he grew up, he gained his living by tilling the ground.

At that time a hawker used to go from place to place, trafficking in goods carried by an ass. Now at each place he came to, when he took the pack down from the ass's back, he used to clothe him in a lion's skin, and turn him loose in the rice and barley-fields. And when the watchmen in the fields saw the ass, they dared not go near him, taking him for a lion.

So one day the hawker stopped in a village; and whilst he was getting his own breakfast cooked, he dressed the ass in a lion's skin, and turned him loose in a barley-field. The watchmen in the field dared not go up to him; but going home, they published the news. Then all the villagers came out with weapons in their hands; and blowing chanks, and beating drums, they went near the field and shouted. Terrified with the fear of death, the ass uttered a cry — the cry of an ass!

And when he knew him then to be an ass, the future Buddha pronounced the First Stanza:

"This is not a lion's roaring. Nor a tiger's, nor a panther's; Dressed in a lion's skin, 'Tis a wretched ass that roars!"