A year passed by and the stepmother gave birth to a child. Jealousy for her own infant daughter now made her hate her stepchild more and more. It was her great desire to see her own daughter first in Prince Minetaka's affection, and in order to attain her utterly selfish end she knew she must oust her stepchild from the house. To begin with, she determined to estrange the father from the little Princess by telling him unfavourable stories of her behaviour and her character. It is needless to say that she invented these stories.
The Bowl-Wearing Princess soon understood that her stepmother hated her. Her grief and anxiety seemed to her more than she could bear. There was no one in the house in whom she could confide, and she knew that to complain of her stepmother to any one, even to her father, would be undutiful. What was she to do in her trouble? To whom could she go but to her own mother? So as often as she could she went to her grave. Here she would kneel and pour out the woe that filled her heart.
"O mother, why must I live on in the world with this ugly bowl on my head? My stepmother truly has a reason for hating such a child about the house. Now that she has a daughter of her own, all the more must she want to get rid of me! And my father, who used to love me so much, he too will surely soon give all his love to his new daughter and forget me! Alas! Alas! the only place that is left to me to come to without fear of dislike is the side of my own dead mother. O mother, sitting upon the lotus leaves in Paradise, receive me now upon the same leaf. Oh! that I might thus escape the sorrow of this world and enter upon the way of Buddha!"
But the Boundary of Life and Death separated the mother and child, and though she prayed earnestly and with tears, lifting her whole heart and soul up in her despair, no answer came to her eagerly listening ear. As she knelt in the little graveyard only the sound of the wind sighing in the pine trees answered her. But the thought that she had told her mother everything comforted her as she returned home.
The stepmother was told of her stepdaughter's frequent visits to the graveyard, and instead of being touched with pity for the motherless girl, she made use of the occasion still further to slander the child to her husband.
"I am told that the Bowl-Wearer, your daughter, goes to her mother's grave and curses me and my child because of her jealousy! What do you think of that? Hasn't she a wicked heart?"
Day by day she watched the little girl wend her way from the house to the graveyard and day by day she repeated in her husband's ear her pretended fears. In her heart she knew quite well that it was only love and unhappiness that sent her unfortunate stepchild to the grave of her mother. At last she said that she was afraid of the evil that might befall her and her child through the Bowl-Wearer's malice; she had decided that they could no longer live together in the same house.
The father, who had hitherto never listened much to his wife's tales, was at last persuaded by her importunity into believing them true. So in an evil hour he summoned his daughter and said: "What is this I hear, wicked daughter? Your deformity has long since been a source of irritation to me, but as long as you behaved well, I put up with it. Now I am told that you go every day to the grave of your mother to curse my wife and her innocent little child. It is impossible for me to keep under my roof any one who is so crippled not only in body but in mind as you are. Go wherever you will from to-day, but longer in this house you shall not stay!"
While the father was speaking these terrible words the stepmother sat behind him, smiling in derision at the poor little Princess and in triumph at the success of her wicked stratagem.
"Woe to the Bowl-Wearing Princess!"