Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/68

 accessible peg, meaning to eat it the next day.* And, every night, when he was asleep, I entered by a hole, and jumping up, carried it off.

Once on a time, another hermit, a friend of his, came there, and after eating, converged with him during the night. And I was at that time attempting to carry off the food, so the first hermit, who was listening, made the pot resound frequently by striking it with a piece of split cane. And the hermit, who was his guest, said, " Why do you interrupt our conversation to do this ?" Whereupon the hermit to whom the cell belonged, answered him, " I have got an enemy here in the form of this mouse, who is always jumping up and carrying off this food of mine, though it is high up. I am trying to frighten him by moving the pot of food with a piece of cane." When he said this, the other hermit said to him, " In truth this covetousness is the bane of creatures, hear a story illustrative of this." Story of the Bráhman's wife and the sesame-seeds. † Once on a time, as I was wandering from one sacred bathing-place to another, I reached a town, and there I entered the house of a certain Bráhman to stay. And while I was there, the Bráhman said to his wife, " Cook to-day, as it is the change of the moon, a dish composed of milk, sesame, and rice, for the Bráhmans." She answered him, " How can a pauper, like you, afford this ?" Then the Bráhman said to her, " My dear, though we should hoard, we should not direct our thoughts to excessive hoarding hear this tale." Story of the greedy Jackal. ‡ :— In a certain forest a hunter. after he had been hunting, fixed an arrow in a self-acting bow,§ and after placing flesh on it, pursued a wild boar. He pierced the wild boar with a dart, but was mortally wounded by his tusks, and died; and a jackal beheld all this from a distance. So he came, but though he was hungry, he would not eat any of the abundant flesh of the hunter and the boar, wishing to hoard it up. But he went first to eat what had been placed on the bow, and that moment the arrow fixed in it flew up, and pierced him so that he died.