Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/269

 No. 3.

SĒRI-VĀNIJA JĀTAKA.

The Merchant of Sēri.

"If you fail here," etc. — This discourse, too, the Blessed One uttered, while staying at Sāvatthi, about a monk who was discouraged in his efforts to obtain spiritual enlightenment.

For we are told that when he too was brought up by the brethren in the same manner as before, the Teacher said, "Brother! you who have given up trying, after taking the vows according to a system so well fitted to lead you to the Paths and Fruit thereof, will sorrow long, like the Seriva trader when be had lost the golden vessel worth a hundred thousand."

The monks asked the Blessed One to explain to them the matter. The Blessed One made manifest that which had been hidden by change of birth.

Long ago, in the fifth dispensation before the present one, the Bodisat was a dealer in tin and brass ware, named Seriva, in the country of that name. This Seriva, together with another dealer in tin and brass ware, who was an avaricious man, crossed the river Tēla-vāha, and entered the town called Andha-pura. And dividing the