And he replied, “Because her eyes winked not, and were red, and she knew no fear, and had no pity, I knew it.”
And so saying, he demanded of the thief, “Who are you?”
And she said, “Lord! I am a Yakshiṇī.”
And he asked, “Why did you take away this child?”
And she said, “I thought to eat him, O my Lord!”
And he rebuked her, saying, “O foolish woman! For your former sins you have been born a Yakshiṇī, and now do you still sin” And he laid a vow upon her to keep the Five Commandments, and let her go.
But the mother of the child exalted the future Buddha, and said, “O my Lord! O Great Physician! may thy life be long!” And she went away, with her babe clasped to her bosom.
The Hebrew story, in which a similar judgment is ascribed to Solomon, occurs in the Book of Kings, which is more than a century older than the time of Gotama. We shall consider below what may be the connexion between the two.
The next specimen is a tale about lifeless things endowed with miraculous powers; perhaps the oldest tale in the world of that kind which has been yet published. It is an episode in