Fourth corner, 2, 3 and 5 (W. L., 129, 130 and 132).
Living in the primeval forest as a strong buffalo the Buddha of after life was continually teased by a monkey who, taunting the wild animal’s inexhaustible kindness, perpetually came in his way.
A yaksha admonishes the bull to be less patient and to crush or thrust down the snarer, but the strong one answers that the monkey can’t be otherwise than he now is, and that they should bear him as he is. There is no better exercise in meekness than suffer a bad treatment patiently, and by which one may hope to set the snarer thinking, and make him turn from sin.
On 2 we see the bull and the monkey, on 3 we also perceive the yaksha, and on 5 the bull delivers his harangue to the demon, and know to persuade him into acknowledging and praising virtue[53].
Fourth corner, 6, 7, 8 and 9 (W. L., 133, 134, 135 and 136).
The Lord once living in the wilderness as a wood-pecker came across a lion who suffered unbearable pains because of a piece of bone which had remained in his throat. The wood-pecker relieved his pains by putting a piece of wood into the opened mule, and by getting the bone out of the throat.
A long time afterwards flying round and almost starving from hunger the wood-pecker met the lion again who was regaling himself on an antelope, he had just killed.
After a moment’s hesitation his former rescuer begs him for a little bit of the antelope’s meat, but the lion asks the beggar whether he is tired of life, and whether he ought not to be thankful that his life was spared when he formerly ventured himself into the inquirer’s mule. A lion doesn’t know any commiseration.
Ashamed the wood-pecker flies away. A sylvan deity follows him, and asks why he doesn’t pick the lion’s eyes, and takes as much of the prey as he likes. And the bird answers with a glorification of virtue; he who does good will find his reward in a future life, but he who returns evil for evil will lose the merit of all his good deeds.
The deity praises the wood-pecker as a wise one, a saint, and disappears.