Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/136

128 Then the Bodhisat made answer to him:—"The king has been burnt with one thousand loads of wood, and the cemetery ground, sprinkled with water from many thousand jars, has been cleared up all around. But they who, in due course, go to another world, being subject to re-birth elsewhere, will not return to earth with the self-same body, so fear thou not!" Consoling him, he uttered the following gâtha:—

From that time forth the "janitor" took comfort; and the Bodhisat, having reigned with justice, after performing many meritorious gifts of alms and the rest, passed away to be reborn according to his deeds.

In days long gone by, when Brahmadatta reigned in Benares, the Bodhisat was re-born among the monkey-kind in the Himalaya regions. He was possessed of great vigour, of elephantine strength, big-limbed, and exceedingly well-formed. He took up his abode in a quarter of the forest at a bend of the Ganges.

At that time a certain crocodile lived in the Ganges. When his wife saw the body of the Bodhisat she conceived an intense longing for his heart, and said to her spouse, "Husband, I am desirous of eating the heart of the monkey-king."

"My dear," he replied, "we live in the sea, but he on the land. How shall I be able to catch him?"

She made answer, "Take him by what ever means you please. I shall die if I don't get the monkey's heart."

"Well! have no fears about it. There is one mode by which I will let you eat his heart."