Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/258

250 Bodhisat was re-born among the bird-kind as a hoopoe. When grown up, he, in the Himâlaya region, made a pleasant nest, sheltered from the rain, and there took up his abode.

At that time, during the rainy reason, when there was a constant torrent-like downpour, a certain monkey came and sat not far off the nest of the hoopoe. The Bodhisat, seeing the ape thus wretched and forlorn, began to talk to him, and spake the following gâtha: —

The monkey replied in the following gâtha:—

On hearing this, the Bodhisat spake the following gâtha:—

Then thought the monkey—"This fellow, because he sits in a nest of his own, sheltered from the rain, takes to reviling me. I'll have him out of it." Then he made a spring at the hoopoe, intending to lay hold of him; but the Bodhisat flew up, and went elsewhere. The monkey, also, after destroying the nest and reducing it to atoms, took his departure.

Inferior versions of this story occur in the Pañca-Tantra. vol i. p. 18, and Hitopadesa, bk. iii.

The moral is, "Advice leads to the exasperation, not to the tranquilisation, of fools."