Now you remember the judgment of Solomon, which has always been admired as a proof of great legal wisdom among the Jews[1]. I must confess that, not having a legal mind, I never could suppress a certain shudder when reading the decision of Solomon: 'Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other.'
Let me now tell you the same story as it is told by the Buddhists, whose sacred Canon is full of such legends and parables. In the Kanjur, which is the Tibetan translation of the Buddhist Tripitaka, we read of two women who claimed each to be the mother of the same child. The king, after listening to their quarrels for a long time, gave it up as hopeless to settle who was the real mother. Upon this Visâkhâ stepped forward and said: 'What is the use of examining and cross-examining these women. Let them take the boy and settle it among themselves.' Thereupon both women fell on the child, and when the fight became violent, the child was hurt and began to cry. Then one of them let him go, because she could not bear to hear the child cry.
That settled the question. The king gave the child to the true mother, and had the other beaten with a rod.
This seems to me, if not the more primitive, yet the more natural form of the story showing a deeper knowledge of human nature, and more wisdom than even the wisdom of Solomon[2].
- ↑ 1 Kings iii. 25.
- ↑ See some excellent remarks on this subject in Rhys Davids, Buddhist Birth Stories, vol. i. pp. xiii and xliv. The learned scholar gives another version of the story from a Singhalese trans-
