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Some Aspects of Indian Culture Seeing this miracle, the female monkey who also wanted to take the chance, jumped into the river and was transformed instantly as before into a beautiful young lady as if proving the virtue of the waters correct.
Not satisfied with what he has got already, the mindless monkey gambled second time to get a better deal but failed. After a second jump, he was reduced to his original condition of a monkey instead of getting a godhood for which he had aspired while making a second bid.
The king who was on a hunting expedition chanced to come across the beautiful young lady (the female monkey) whom he took away and made her his queen.
Having forfeited the human existence which he has so luckily got and having also lost his wife, the only object of his happiness and solace, the monkey began to beat bosom and weep and wail his lonely sorry plight to which he was by his own shortsightedness and folly consigned.
Dattasiri pointedly drew the attention of Jambu not to throw away to winds the present promising life which is a dead certainly for the sake of a better life hereafter in the foolish manner of the mindless monkey of the story. The monkey, she summed up, was not content with what he has already got and staked, for a hypotbetical better life which existed in imagination only.
So my dear! may you also not go to monkey's way and fare ill as that-remonstrated Dattasiri. (JC, Uddesa, 10, pp. 99, 100).
(3) The story of a Monkey and the Bitumen · Jambu did not budge an inch even from the stand he had taken. Sindhumai, Dattasiri. Paumasiri and Paumasenā reiterated their views and arguments about the untenability of Jambu's resolve and cited illustrative parables to bring hone to Jambu the fact of the matter.
Jambu stieking to his angle of thought with unshakeable faith rejoined forcefully that he was not as senseless, to be caught up into the snare of worldly pleasures, as that monkey who got his face, hands, and feet, one by one, immersed into the bitumen.
As Paumaseña requested Jambu to explain in details the significance of what he said, Jambu began :
In the Vindhya mountain, there lived a very strong monkey which alone enjoyed with female monkeys driving away other male rivals. Once a young and a strong monkey came over there who proved more than a match to the old one. A battle royal ensued between them both with the result that the former was routed away. Resigning to his fate, the old monkey fled away exhausted and wounded. He came over to a cave in the mountain thicket and there on one of the rocks he found bitumen (Silajatu) oozing which he mistook as water and began to lick it to allay his thirst. Bitumen clung stickily to his face which he could not remove. He tried to remove it with his hands and feet but they too got stuck up. Finally he met his doom being inextricably involved in the bitumen.
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