After giving this command, the Bodisat took a cane and seated himself. So, too, those eighty thousand monkeys took, each of them, a cane, and seated themselves round the pond. And at the same moment as he drew the water up into his cane and drank, so, too, they all sat safe on the bank, and drank.
Thus the water-demon got not one of them into his power on their drinking the water, and he returned in sorrow to his own place. But the Bodisat and his troop went back again to the forest.
When the Teacher, having finished this discourse in illustration of his words (“The hollowness of those canes, mendicants, is a former command of mine”), he made the connexion, and summed up the Jātaka, saying: “He who was then the water-demon was Devadatta; the eighty thousand monkeys were the Buddha’s retinue; but the monkey king, clever in resource, was I myself.”
END OF THE STORY OF NAḶAPĀNA.
No. 21.
KURUNGA-MIGA JĀTAKA.
The Wily Antelope.
“The Kurunga knows full well,” etc.—This the teacher told while at Jetavana about Devadatta.
For once when the monks had assembled in the lecture hall, they sat talking of Devadatta’s wickedness, saying, “Brother Devadatta has suborned archers, and hurled down a rock, and sent forth Dhanapālaka the elephant; in every possible way he goes about to slay the Sage.”
The Teacher came, and sat down on the seat reserved for him, and asked, “What is it, then, Mendicants, you are sitting here talking about?”