The Bodisat took it up in his hands, seated himself at the river-side, and said to it, “My good fish! Had I not caught sight of you this day, you would have lost your life. Now henceforth sin no more!”
And so exhorting it, he threw it into the water, and returned to the city.
When the Teacher had finished this discourse, he proclaimed the Truths. At the end of the Truths the depressed monk was established in the fruit of conversion. Then the Teacher made the connexion, and summed up the Jātaka: “She who at that time was the female fish was the former wife, the fish was the depressed monk, but the chaplain was I myself.”
END OF THE STORY OF THE FISH AND HIS WIFE.[328]
No. 35.
VAṬṬAKA JĀTAKA.
The Holy Quail.
“Wings I have that will not fly.”—This the Master told when journeying through Magadha about the going out of a Jungle Fire.
For once, when the Master was journeying through Magadha, he begged his food in a certain village in that land; and after he had returned from his rounds and had finished his meal, he started forth again, attended by the disciples. Just then a great fire arose in the jungle. Many of the monks were in front, many of them behind. And the fire came spreading on towards them, one mass of smoke and flame. Some of the monks being unconverted were terrified with the fear of death; and called out—
“Let’s make a counter-fire, so that the conflagration shall not spread beyond the space burnt out by that.”