Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/265

Rh "It is true, O Blessed One!" was the reply.

"How is it, brother, that you, who have now taken the vows according to such a system, have proved yourself to be — not a man of few desires, contented, separate from the world, persevering in effort — but so irresolute! Why, formerly you were full of determination. By your energy alone the men and bullocks of five hundred waggons obtained water in the sandy desert, and were saved. How is it that you give up trying, now?"

Then by those few words that brother was established in resolution!

But the others, hearing that story, besought of the Blessed One, saying, "Lord! We know that this brother has given up trying now; and yet you tell how formerly by his energy alone the men and bullocks of five hundred waggons obtained water in the sandy desert, and were saved. Tell us how this was."

"Listen, then, O mendicants!" said the Blessed One: and having thus excited their attention, he made manifest a thing concealed through change of birth.

Once upon a time, when Brahma-datta was reigning in Benares, in the country of Kāsi, the future Buddha was born in a merchant's family; and when he grew up, he went about trafficking with five hundred carts.

One day he arrived at a sandy desert twenty leagues across. The sand in that desert was so fine, that when taken in the closed fist, it could not be kept in the hand. After the sun had risen it became as hot as a mass of charcoal, so that no man could walk on it. Those, therefore, who had to travel over it took wood, and water, and