Page:Buddhist Birth Stories, or, Jātaka Tales.djvu/438

 No. 39.

NANDA JĀTAKA.

Nanda on the Buried Gold.

"The golden heap, methinks." — This the Master told while at Jetavana, about a monk living under Sāriputta.

He, they say, was meek, and mild of speech, and served the Elder with great devotion. Now on one occasion the Elder had taken leave of the Master, started on a tour, and gone to the mountain country in the south of Magadha. When they had arrived there, the monk became proud, followed no longer the word of the Elder; and when he was asked to do a thing, would even become angry with the Elder.

The Elder could not understand what it all meant. When his tour was over, he returned again to Jetavana; and from the moment he arrived at the monastery, the monk became as before. This the Elder told the Master, saying, —

"Lord! there is a mendicant in my division of the Order, who in one place is like a slave bought for a hundred, and in another becomes proud, and refuses with anger to do what he is asked."

Then the Teacher said, "Not only now, Sāriputta, has the monk behaved like that; in a former birth also, when in one place he was like a slave bought for a hundred, and in another was angrily independent."

And at the Elder's request he told the story.