CHAPTER II. SĪLAVAGGA.
No. 11.
LAKKHAṆA JĀTAKA.
The Story of ‘Beauty.’
“The advantage is to the good.”—This the Master told while at the Bambu-grove near Rājagaha, about Devadatta.[279] For on one occasion, when Devadatta asked for the Five Rules,[280] and could not get what he wanted, he made a schism in the Order, and taking four hundred of the mendicants with him, went and dwelt at the rock called Gayā-sīsa.
Afterwards the minds of these mendicants became open to conviction. And the Master, knowing it, said to his two chief disciples, “Sāriputta! those five hundred pupils of yours adopted the heresy of Devadatta, and went away with him, but now their minds have become open to conviction. Do you go there with a number of the brethren, and preach to them, and instruct them in the Fruits of the Path of Holiness, and bring them back with you!”
They went, and preached to them, and instructed them in the Fruits, and the next day at dawn returned to the Bambu Grove, bringing those mendicants with them. And as Sāriputta on his return was standing by, after paying his respects to the Blessed One, the mendicants exalted him, saying to the Blessed One, “Lord! how excellent appears our elder brother, the Minister of Righteousness, returning with five hundred disciples as his retinue, whereas Devadatta is now without any followers at all!”
“Not only now, O mendicants! has Sāriputta come in glory, surrounded by the assembly of his brethren; in a former birth, also, he did the same. And not now only has Devadatta been deprived of his following; in a former birth also he was the same.”
The monks requested the Blessed One to explain how that was. Then the Blessed One made manifest a thing hidden by the interval of existence.
Long ago, in the city Rājagaha, in the land of Magadha, there ruled a certain king of Magadha. At that time the Bodisat came to life as a deer, and when he grew up he lived in the forest at the head of a herd of a thousand deer. He had two young ones, named Lakkhaṇa (the Beautifully-marked One, ‘Beauty’) and Kāḷa (the Dark One, ‘Brownie’).