the handsome appearance of a Muni. For the ascetic's skin he wore his own, his bark-garment was the hairs of his body.
3. As everything he did in thought, speech, and action was purified by his friendliness, most of the animals given to wickedness were like his pupils and friends[1].
But more especially he had caught the hearts of an otter, a jackal, and an ape. They became his companions, attracted by the love and respect which his eminent virtues inspired in them. Like relations whose affection is founded on mutual relationship, like friends whose friendship has grown by the compliance to each other's wishes, they passed their time rejoicing together. Opposed to the nature of the brutes, they showed compassion to living beings, and their cupidity being extinguished, they forgot to practise theft. By this behaviour and by their having regard to good renown conformably to (the precepts of) righteousness (dharma), by their keen understanding and, owing to this, by their close observance of religious obligations in the manner approved by the pious, they roused even the surprise of the deities.
4, 5. If out of the two lines of conduct—that which complies with pleasures and checks virtue, and that which is in accordance with virtue and obstructs pleasures—a man applies himself to the virtuous side, he is already illustrious, how much more a being that has the shape of a beast! But among them, he who bore the figure of a hare and was their teacher, was so pious, he esteemed the practice of compassion for others so highly, and his excellent native character was accompanied by such a set of virtues, that their renown reached even the world of the Devas.
One day at evening-time, the Great-minded One
- ↑ The text is slightly corrupt here. The MSS. have ᵒsukhâh, the printed text ᵒmukhâh, but in the various readings the editor again adopts the reading of the MSS. But now Prof. Kern tells me he should rather suppose that the original reading was ᵒsakhâh, which suits the sense better.
