Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/392

276 a neighbouring city. Then her parents thinking, "It will do for a feast of delicacies for the guests who come to the girl's wedding," fattened up a pig with boiled rice. And his name was 'Sausages.'

When Little-red saw this, he asked his brother, "All the carting work in the household falls to our lot. Yet these people give us mere grass and straw to eat; while they bring up that pig on boiled rice! What can be the reason of that fellow getting that?"

Then his brother said to him, "Dear Little-red, don't envy the creature his food! This poor pig is eating the food of death! These people are fattening the pig to provide a feast for the guests at their daughter's wedding. But a few days more, and you shall see how these men will come and seize the pig by his legs, and drag him off out of his sty, and deprive him of his life, and make curry for the guests!" And so saying, he uttered the following stanza:

"Envy not 'Sausages!' 'Tis deadly food he eats! Eat your chaff, and be content; 'Tis the sign of length of life!"

And, not long after, those men came there; and they killed 'Sausages,' and cooked him up in various ways.

Then the Bodisat said to Little-red, "Have you seen 'Sausages,' my dear?"

"I have seen, brother," said he, "what has come of the food poor Sausages ate. Better a hundred, a thousand times, than his rice, is our food of only grass and straw and chaff; for it works no harm, and is evidence that our lives will last."