“Well, Brother! this is my own handiwork; but if you talk like that, what can I do? You may have it,” said the other; and giving him the robe made of old rags, he took away the new cloths in triumph.
And the man of Jetavana put on the robe; but when a few days after he discovered, on washing it, that it was made of rags, he was covered with confusion. And it became noised abroad in the order, “That Jetavana robe-maker has been outwitted, they say, by a man from the country!”
And one day the monks sat talking about this in the Lecture Hall, when the Teacher came up and asked them what they were talking about, and they told him the whole matter.
Then the Teacher said, “Not now only has the Jetavana robe-maker taken other people in in this way, in a former birth he did the same. And not now only has he been outwitted by the countryman, in a former birth he was outwitted too.” And he told a tale.
Long ago the Bodisat was born to a forest life as the Genius of a tree standing near a certain lotus pond.
Now at that time the water used to run short at the dry season in a certain pond, not over large, in which there were a good many fish. And a crane thought, on seeing the fish—
“I must outwit these fish somehow or other and make a prey of them.”
And he went and sat down at the edge of the water, thinking how he should do it.
When the fish saw him, they asked him, “What are you sitting there for, lost in thought?”