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Shri Jaina Conference Herald. heart which seemed ready to burst, let the child go and stood weeping. The sage asked the multitude, “Is it the heart of the mother which is tender towards the child or the heart of her who is not the mother ?” They answered, "The mother's heart.” “Is she the mother who kept hold of the child or she who let it go ?” They replied, "She who let it go." "Do you know who she is who stole the child ?” “ We do not know, O sage.” She is a goblin,-she seized it in order to eat it.”
When they asked how he knew that he replied, "I knew her by her unwinking and red eyes and by her casting no shadow and by her fearlessness and want of mercy.” Then he asked her what she was, and she confessed that she was a goblin. “Why did you seize the child ? ” “ To eat it " “ You blind fool,” he said, “ you committed sin in old time and so were torn as a goblin; and now you still go on com: mitting sin, blind fool that you are.” Then he exhorted her and established her in the five precepts and sent her away; and the mother blessed him, and saying, “ May'st thou live long, my lord,” took her son and went her way.'
There can, of course, not be the slightest doubt that the above giver Jaina version of this tale is much better than the two Buddhist ones. But we can prove the fact that it is more original; than the Bauddha story in its northern as well as in its southern form. We read, as all Jews and Christians know, the same story in the Old Testament, 1 where it is given as a historical event. It runs thus:
Then two harlots came to the King, and presented them. selves before him. And one of the two said to him: 'Listen to me, 0, my Lord ! I and this woman were dwelling together in the same house, and I bore a child in the house near her. Three days after my delivery she too was delivered, and we lived together, and no other person besides both of us was in the house. But this woman's son died in the night; for in her sleep she had squeezed him to death. And she rose in the night; and took my son from the side of your sleeping
1.1 Reg. LXX and Vulgata III. Reg. ) III, 16 ff.
