A long time ago there lived on the Vindhya mountain a continent king of parrots, named Hemaprabha, who was an incarnation of a portion of a Buddha, and was rich in chastity that he had practised during a former birth. He remembered his former state and was a teacher of virtue. He had for warder a parrot named Chárumati, who was a fool enslaved to his passions. Once on a time, a female parrot, his mate, was killed by a fowler, who was laying snares, and he was so much grieved at being separated from her, that he was reduced to a miserable condition. Then Hemaprabha, the wise king of the parrots, in order by an artifice to rescue him from his grief, told him this false tale for his good; “Your wife is not dead, she has escaped from the snare of the fowler, for I saw her alive a moment ago. Come, I will shew her to you.” Having said this, the king took Chárumati through the air to a lake. There he shewed him his own reflection in the water, and said to him; “Look! here is your wife!” When the foolish parrot heard that, and saw his own reflection in the water, he went into it joyfully, and tried to embrace and kiss his wife. But not being embraced in return by his beloved, and not hearing her voice, he said to himself: “Why does not my beloved embrace me and speak to me.” Supposing therefore that she was angry with him, he went and brought an ámalaka fruit, and dropped it on his own reflection, thinking that it was his beloved, in order to coax her. The ámalaka fruit sank into the water, and rose again to the surface, and the parrot, supposing that his gift had been rejected by his beloved, went full of grief to king Hemaprabha and said to him, “King, that wife of mine will not touch me or speak to me. Moreover she rejected the ámalaka fruit which I gave her.” When the king heard that, he said to him slowly, as if he were reluctant to tell it, “I ought not to tell you this, but nevertheless I will tell you, because I love you so much. Your wife is at present in love with another, so how can she shew you affection? And I will furnish you with ocular proof of it in this very tank.” After saying this, he took him there, and shewed him their two reflections close together in the tank. When the foolish parrot saw it, he thought his wife was in the embrace of another male parrot, and turning round disgusted, he said to the king, “Your Majesty, this is the result of my folly in not listening to your advice: So tell me, now, what I ought to do.” When the warder said this, king Hemaprabha, thinking that he had now an opportunity of instructing him, thus addressed him; “It is better to take Háláhala poison, it is better to wreathe a serpent round one’s neck, than to repose confidence in females, a calamity against which neither charms nor talismanic jewels avail. Females, being, like the winds, very changeful, and enveloped with a thick cloud of passion,[11] defile those who are walking in the right path, and disgrace them altogether. So wise men, of firm nature, should not cleave to them, but should practise chastity, in order to obtain the rank of sages who have subdued their passions.” Chárumati, having been thus instructed by the king, renounced the society of females, and gradually became continent like Buddha.
“So you see, those that are rich in chastity deliver others; and, now that I have instructed you in the perfection of chastity, listen to the perfection of patience.”
Story of the patient hermit Śubhanaya.
There lived on the Kedára mountain a great hermit, named Śubhanaya, who was for ever bathing in the waters of the Mandákiní, and was gentle and emaciated with penance. One night, some robbers came there to look for some gold, which they had previously buried there, but they could not find it anywhere. Accordingly, thinking that in that uninhabited place it could only have been carried off by the hermit, they entered his cell and said to him: “Ah! you hypocritical hermit, give up our gold, which you have taken from the earth, for you have succeeded in robbing us, who are robbers by profession.” When the hermit, who had not taken the treasure, was falsely reproached in these words by the robbers, he said, “I did not take away your gold, and I have never seen any gold.” Then the good hermit was beaten with sticks by those robbers, and yet the truthful man continued to tell the same story; and then the robbers cut off, one after another, his hands and his feet, thinking that he was obstinate, and finally gouged out his eyes. But when they found that, in spite of all this, he continued to tell the same tale without flinching, they came to the conclusion that some one else had stolen their gold, and they returned by the way that they came.
The next morning a king, named Śekharajyoti, a pupil of that hermit’s, who had come to have an interview with him, saw him in that state. Then, being tortured with sorrow for his spiritual guide,[12] he questioned him, and found out the state of the case, and had a search made for those robbers, and had them brought to that very spot. And he was about to have them put to death, when the hermit said to him; “King, if you put them to death, I will kill myself. If the sword did this work on me, how are they in fault? And if they put the sword in motion, anger put them in motion, and their anger was excited by the loss of their gold, and that was due to my sins in a previous state of existence, and that was due to my ignorance, so my ignorance is the only thing that has injured me. So my ignorance should be slain by me. Moreover, even if these men deserved to be put to death for doing me an injury, ought not their lives to be saved on account of their having done me a benefit? For if they had not done to me what they have done, there would have been no one with regard to whom I could have practised patience, of which the fruit is emancipation? So they have done me a thorough benefit.” With many speeches of this kind did the patient hermit instruct the king, and so he delivered the robbers from punishment. And on account of the excellence of his asceticism his body immediately became unmutilated as before, and that moment he attained emancipation.
“Thus patient men escape from the world of births. I have now explained to you the perfection of patience; listen to the perfection of perseverance.”
Story of the persevering young Bráhman.
Once on a time there was a young Bráhman of the name of Máládhara: he beheld one day a prince of the Siddhas flying through the air. Wishing to rival him, he fastened to his sides wings of grass, and continually leaping up, he tried to learn the art of flying in the air. And as he continued to make this useless attempt every day, he was at last seen by the prince while he was roaming though the air. And the prince thought, “I ought to take pity on this boy who shews spirit in struggling earnestly to attain an impossible object, for it is my business to patronize such.” Thereupon, being pleased, he took the Bráhman boy, by his magic power, upon his shoulder, and made him one of his followers. “Thus you see that even gods are pleased with perseverance; I have now set before you the perfection of perseverance; hear the perfection of meditation.”