"Lord! we have been staying in a village in the land of Kosala; and we left it to come here and visit you."
"I hope, then, you are come in concord."
The one without a strainer replied, "Lord! this monk quarrelled with me on the way, and wouldn't lend me his strainer!"
But the other one said, "Lord! this monk knowingly drank water with living things in it without straining it!"
"Is it true, O monk, as he says, that you knowingly drank water with living creatures in it?"
"Yes, Lord! I drank the water as it was."
Then the Teacher said, "There were wise men once, O monk, ruling in heaven, who, when defeated and in full flight along the mighty deep, stopped their car, saying, 'Let us not, for the sake of supremacy, put living things to pain;' and made sacrifice of all their glory, and even of their life, for the sake of the young of the Supaṇṇas."
And he told a tale.[1]
Long ago a king of Magadha was reigning in Rājagaha, in the land of Magadha.
At that time the Bodisat (just as he who is now Sakka was once born in the village of Macala in Magadha) was born in that very village as a nobleman's son. On the naming-day they gave him the name of Prince Magha, and when he grew up he was known as 'Magha the young Brāhman.'
His parents procured him a wife from a family of equal
- ↑ The following tale is told, with some variations, in the course of the commentary on verse 30 of the Dhammapada (pp. 186 and foll.); but the Introductory Story is there different.
