Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/379

 No. 27.

ABHIṆHA JĀTAKA.

The Elephant and the Dog.

"No longer can he take a morsel even," etc. — This the Master told when at Jetavana about an old monk and a lay convert.

At Sāvatthi, the story goes, there were two friends. One of them entered the Order, and went every day to get his meal at the house of the other. The other gave him to eat, and ate himself; and went back with him to the monastery, sat there chatting and talking with him till sunset, and then returned to the city. The other, again, used to accompany him to the city gate, and then turn back. And the close friendship between them became common talk among the brethren.

Now one day the monks sat talking in the Lecture Hall about their intimacy. When the Teacher came, he asked them what they were talking about, and they told him. Then he said, "Not now only, O mendicants, have these been close allies; they were so also in a former birth." And he told a tale.

Long ago, when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodisat became his minister.

At that time a dog used to go to the state elephant's