Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/342

 No. 18.

MATAKA-BHATTA JĀTAKA.

On Offering Food to the Dead.

"If people would but understand." — This the Teacher told when at Jetavana, about food offered to the dead.

For at that time people used to kill sheep and goats in large numbers in order to offer what is called "The Feast of the Dead" in honour of their deceased relatives. When the monks saw men doing so, they asked the Teacher, saying, "Lord! the people here bring destruction on many living creatures in order to provide the so-called 'Feast of the Dead.' Can there possibly, Sir, be any advantage in that?"

The Teacher said, "Let not us, O mendicants! provide the Feast of the Dead: for what advantage is there in destroying life? Formerly sages seated in the sky preached a discourse showing the evils of it, and made all the dwellers in Jambu-dīpa give up this practice. But now since change of birth has set in, it has arisen again." And he told a tale.

Once upon a time, when Brahma-datta was reigning in Benares, a Brāhman, a world-famous teacher, accomplished in the Three Vedas, had a goat brought, with the