[125] The technical name for that imbibing of good qualities is sâtmîbhâva.
[126] Or 'rain-clouds, out of season and black.' The pun is in the word kâlamegha.
[127] The corresponding gâthâ in the Pâli Gâtaka (Fausb. I, p. 332) is also found in the Kariyâpitaka (III, 10, 7) with some preferable various readings. In both redactions the birds have already begun to kill and devour the fishes, when the Bodhisatta performs his sakkakiriyâ and addresses Paggunna, commanding him, says the Gâtaka prose-writer, 'as a man would do his attendant slave.' This exhortation is uttered before the appearance of the clouds, which I suppose to be the older version of our story.
[128] Here follows an interpolation, which the editor of the original has placed within brackets. It is a quotation, which was originally no doubt a marginal note. Here is its translation:
'This is also declared by our Lord in the two gâthâs: "Easy is the livelihood &c."
2. 'Easy is the livelihood of the shameless crow, that bold and impetuous animal, who practises impure actions, but it is a very sinful life.
3. 'But the modest one who always strives after purity has a hard livelihood, the bashful one who is scrupulous and sustains himself only by pure modes of living.
'This couple of gâthâs is found in the Âryasthâvirîyanikâya.'
The gâthâs quoted are substantially and partly verbally the same as two stanzas of the Dhammapada (244 and 245) that are their Pâli counterpart.
[129] The juice of grapes not being among the national intoxicating liquors of India, Sanskrit has no proper word for 'wine.' For rhetorical purposes, however, it will meet no objection to use this term in a translation. Moreover, nowadays 'wine' is signified in Sanskrit by words meaning 'strong liquor.'