“Sweet is the touch of the hand, Lord! of her who was formerly my wife. I cannot forsake her!”
Then the Master said, “O Brother! this woman does you harm. In a former birth also you were just being killed through her when I came up and saved you.” And he told a tale.
Once upon a time, when Brahma-datta was reigning in Benāres, the Bodisat became his private chaplain.
At that time certain fishermen were casting their nets into the river. Now a big fish came swimming along playing lustily with his wife. She still in front of him smelt the smell of a net, and made a circuit, and escaped it. But the greedy amorous fish went right into the mouth of the net.
When the fishermen felt his coming in they pulled up the net, seized the fish, and threw it alive on the sand, and began to prepare a fire and a spit, intending to cook and eat it.
Then the fish lamented, saying to himself;
“The heat of the fire would not hurt me, nor the torture of the spit, nor any other pain of that sort; but that my wife should sorrow over me, thinking I must have deserted her for another, that is indeed a dire affliction!”
And he uttered this stanza—
“’Tis not the heat, ‘tis not the cold,