handing over to the partridge (their teacher) and the lizard the entire hermitage.
It happened that a certain ill-conducted and false recluse,[1] wandering about hither and thither, arrived at this place. As soon as the lizard saw him she made him welcome:—"Here you will find rice, there you'll find oil and the rest. Prepare some food and enjoy it." Having said this, the lizard departed in search of her own food.
Very early in the morning, as soon as the ascetic had boiled his rice, he killed the two young lizards, broiled and ate the savoury morsels. In the day-time he killed and ate both the learned partridge and the calf. In the evening, as soon as he knew that the cow had returned, he killed her too, and ate the flesh. Then, at the root of that tree, he lay down and fell asleep, snoring like a hog.
When the lizard returned in the evening and missed her young ones she went about looking everywhere for them.
A tree-sprite saw the lizard greatly agitated, because she had not discovered her little ones, and, standing in a hole in the trunk by his own supernatural power, he said:—"O lizard, be not distressed. That base fellow there has killed thy young ones, together with the partridge, calf and cow. Seize him by the throat, and take away his life." While thus talking with her, he uttered the following gatha:—
"Set deep thy sharp fangs in that villain's vile throat,
Who murder'd and ate thy innocent young;
Not free let him go, hut kill him outright,
For ingrate is he whom well thou didst treat."
Then the lizard replied in the following gâtha:—
No place I see to fix my fangs, so foul is he and vile.
A low-bred cruel man, I ween, is like a filthy rag.
Not all the world would him suffice who lacks a grateful mind.
He ever tries more gains to make, though he his friend may harm."
- ↑ "Ill conducted." The Pâli has niggatiko, for which there is the variant reading nikkâruniko, cruel, pitiless. The true reading may have been nigganthiko, a Digamhara or naked ascetic. Niggatiko may of course simply mean "leading a bad course of life," not walking aright, of "unholy walk." This false ascetic is alluded to in the Milinda Panha as vanacârana (=vanacâraka) and aniketavâsî. His past associations had been low, and, as a last resort, he seems to have adopted the life of a mendicant, but kept no vows.
