Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/328

212 where those two were coming on, there stood a certain hunter behind a thicket.

The young roe smelt the smell of a man, and immediately thought, "There'll be some hunter behind there." And she let the foolish stag go on first, and kept back herself. The hunter with one shot from his bow felled the stag there on the spot; but the roe, as soon as she saw he was hit, fled away like the wind.

Then the hunter came out of his ambush, skinned that deer, made a fire, cooked the sweet flesh in the glowing charcoal, ate and drank, and carried off the rest all dropping with blood and gore, and went home to give his children a treat.

Now the Bodisat of that time was a tree fairy, dwelling in that wood. When he saw what had happened, he said to himself,

"Not through father, not through mother, but through lust, has this poor fool of a deer come to his death. In the dawn of passion creatures think themselves in bliss, but they end in losing their limbs in misery, or tasting the grief of all kinds of bonds and blows. What more shameful in this world than that which brings sorrow and death to others? What more despicable than the country where women administer and teach, a land under harem rule? What more wretched than the men who give themselves up to women's control?" And then, whilst all the fairies of the wood cast bouquets before him and cheered him on, he brought the three rebukes into one verse, and made the whole wood ring as he uttered the stanza —

O dreadful barbéd dart of love, that tears men's hearts! O foolish land, where woman bears the rule! O stupid men, who fall 'neath woman's power!