Now one day when the Tinduka tree had put forth flowers and fruits, and these had grown ripe, the monkeys said to their chief—
“O chief, as the Tinduka tree is ripe, let us go to it and eat.”
Thereupon the chief, with a troop of five hundred monkeys, climbed the Tinduka tree, and they began to devour the fruit. The watchman brought word to the [[349]]men who dwelt in that place, saying, “Honoured sirs, all the monkeys have climbed up the Tinduka tree and are feeding. Do ye do what ought to be done.”
Then in all haste the troop of men who dwelt there, with clenched fists, and armed with bows and arrows and battle-axes, betook themselves to the Tinduka tree and began to cut it down. Fear came upon the monkeys, and they sprang to and fro on the tree. But the chief sat still and did nothing. The monkeys said to him, “O chief, wherefore do you sit there tranquilly, while we are running to and fro in the pangs of intolerable misery?” He replied in a verse—
“The busy and the idle are like unto each other. The ends of the tree are many; let food be taken by him who is intent upon his life.”
At that time one of the monkey-chief’s young ones, a captive in the village, was sitting absorbed in thought, leaning his cheek upon his hand. A good monkey came that way, saw the young monkey thus absorbed in thought, and said—
“O friend, why do you sit there thus absorbed in thought, leaning your cheek upon your hand?”
The young monkey replied—
“How could I not be absorbed in thought, since the whole troop of the men who live in the village have taken the field in order to put my relatives to death?”
“Why do you not behave with courage?”