Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/387

Rh When the Teacher came there, he asked them what they were discussing, and they told him. Then he said, "O mendicants! who should now bear the yoke that I can bear? For even when an animal in a former birth I could find no one to drag the weight I dragged." And he told a tale.

Long ago, when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodisat returned to life as a bull.

Now, when it was still a young calf, its owners stopped a while in an old woman's house, and gave him to her when they settled their account for their lodging. And she brought him up, treating him like a son, and feeding him on gruel and rice.

He soon became known as "The old woman's Blackie." When he grew up, he roamed about, as black as collyrium, with the village cattle, and was very good-tempered and quiet. The village children used to catch hold of his horns, or ears, or dewlaps, and hang on to him; or amuse themselves by pulling his tail, or riding about on his back.

One day he said to himself, "My mother is wretchedly poor. She's taken so much pains, too, in bringing me up, and has treated me like a son. What if I were to work for hire, and so relieve her distress!" And from that day he was always on the look out for a job.

Now one day a young caravan owner arrived at a neighbouring ford with five hundred bullock-waggons. And his bullocks were not only unable to drag the carts across, but even when he yoked the five hundred pair in a row they could not move one cart by itself.