Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/274

 No. 4.

CULLAKA-SEṬṬHI JĀTAKA.

The Story of Chullaka the Treasurer.

"The wise, far-seeing man" etc. — This discourse the Blessed One uttered, while at Jīvaka's Mango-grove near Rājagaha, concerning the Elder whose name was Roadling the Younger.

Now here it ought to be explained how Roadling the Younger came to be born. The daughter of a wealthy house in Rājagaha, they say, had contracted an intimacy with a slave, and being afraid that people would find out what she had done, she said to him, "We can't stay here. If my parents discover this wrongdoing, they will tear us in pieces. Let us go to some far-off country, and dwell there." So, taking the few things they had, they went out privately together to go and dwell in some place, it did not matter where, where they would not be known.

And settling in a certain place, they lived together there, and she conceived. And when she was far gone with child, she consulted with her husband, saying, "I am far gone with child; and it will be hard for both of us if the confinement were to take place where I have no friends and relations. Let us go home again!"

But he let the days slip by, saying all the while, "Let us go to-day; let us go to-morrow."

1 The introductory story to this Jātaka is used in Rogers's Buddhagosha's Parables, pp. 61-68, as the introduction to a different Birth Story. Verse 25 of the Dhammapada is said hy the Commentator on that book (Fausböll, p. 181) to have been spoken of Little Roadling, and it would fit very aptly to the present story about him.