Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/347

Rh But the tree-god, standing in a fork of the tree, uttered this stanza:

Would you be free, you first must die! Seeking for freedom thus, is being bound! Not by such deeds as these are the wise made free: Salvation is the bond of fools!"

Thenceforward men refrained from such life- destroying deeds, and living a life of righteousness filled the city of the gods.

The Teacher, having finished this discourse, made the connexion, and summed up the Jātaka: "I at that time was the Genius of the Tree."

END OF THE STORY ON OFFERINGS GIVEN UNDER A VOW.