him that this was not the first occasion on which he had saved their lives, and on Ânanda's request for a further explanation, related the following circumstances. Countless years ago, there lived in Jumbudwîpa (India) a certain king who had three sons. The youngest son was mild and merciful from his childhood upwards. One day, when the king, with his ministers, wives and sons, was at a picnic outside the town, the three sons went into a wood, where they found a tigress, with young recently littered, so nearly starved that she was almost on the point of devouring her own brood. The youngest asked his brothers what food a tigress would eat. "Newly-killed meat and warm blood." "Is there any one who would support its life with his own body?" "No one," replied the elder brothers; "that would be too difficult" (I give only the substance of this colloquy). Then the youngest prince thought within himself: "For a long time I have been driven about in the circle of births, and have thrown away my body and my life innumerable times; often have I sacrificed it for the passion of the desires, often for that of rage, often too for folly and ignorance; what value then has this body, which has not one single time trodden the field of meritorious actions for the sake of religion!" Meantime, all three had walked on; but the youngest, pleading some business of his own, desired them to go on, leaving him to follow. Having returned to the cave of the tigress, he laid himself down beside her, but found her too weak to open her mouth. Hereupon the prince contrived to bleed himself with a sharp splinter of wood, and the tigress, after licking the blood that flowed from him, was sufficiently refreshed to consume him altogether. The two elder brothers, wondering at his long absence, returned to the tiger's hole, where, on finding his remains, they rolled upon the ground and fainted, overcome with grief. The queen, who had had an alarming dream, questioned them anxiously on their return as to their brother, and she too on learning the sad event, which ther choking voices for some time prevented them from telling, fell senseless to the ground. Soon after, both king and queen visited the den, but could find nothing but bones. Meantime, the prince had been born again in the Tushita heaven. Looking about to discover what good action of his had brought him to this place, he saw the bones
