Page:The Katha Sarit Sagara.djvu/265

 righteousness, answered her, " It is true, a trifling act of righteousness duly performed will bring much fruit, and in proof of this, O queen, hear the ancient tale of the seven Bráhmans."

Story of the seven Bráhmans who devoured a cow in time of famine:— Long ago in a city called Kundina, a certain Bráhman teacher had for pupils seven sons of Bráhmans. Then that teacher, under pressure of famine, sent those pupils to ask his father-in-law, who was rich in cows, to give him one. And those pupils of his went, with their bellies pinched by hunger, to his father-in-law, who dwelt in another land, and asked him, as their teacher had ordered them, for a cow. He gave them one cow to support them, but the miserly fellow did not give them food, though they were hungry. Then they took the cow, and as they were returning and had accomplished half the journey, being excessively pained by hunger, they fell exhausted on the earth. They said— " Our teacher's house is far off, and we are afflicted by calamity far from home, and food is hard to obtain everywhere, so it is all over with our lives. And in the same way this cow is certain to die in this wilderness without water, wood, or human beings, and our teacher will not derive even the smallest advantage from it. So let us support our lives with its flesh, and quickly restore our teacher and his family with what remains over: for it is a time of sore distress." Having thus deliberated, those seven students treated that cow as a victim, and sacrificed it on the spot according to the system prescribed in the sacred treatises. After sacrificing to the gods and manes, and eating its flesh according to the prescribed method, they went and took what remained of it to their teacher. They bowed before him, and told him all that they had done, to the letter, and he was pleased with them, because they told the truth, though they had committed a fault. And after seven days they died of famine, but because they told the truth on that occasion, they were born again with the power of remembering their former birth. " Thus even a small germ of merit, watered with the water of holy aspiration, bears fruit to men in general, as a seed to cultivators, but the same corrupted by the water of impure aspiration bears fruit in the form of misfortune, and à propos of this I will tell you another tale, listen !"

Story of the two ascetics, one a Bráhman the other a Chandála:—- Once on a time two men remained for the same length of time fasting on the banks of the Ganges, one a Bráhman and the other a Chandála. Of those two, the Bráhman being overpowered with hunger, and seeing some Nishádas* come that way bringing fish and eating them, thus reflected in his folly— " O happy in the world are these fishermen, sons of female