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the deer told him all. And the man-king was greatly touched, and said : “Rise up! I grant you your lives, both to you and to her!" Then the rejoinder came: “But though two be thus safe, what shall the rest of the herds do, O king of men?” So they also obtained security. And when the Banyan Deer had similarly procured protection for all the various sorts of living things, the king of the deer exhorted the king of inen to justice and mercy, preaching the truth to him “with the grace of a Buddha."
And the doe gave birth to a son, beautiful as buds of flowers, and he went playing with the Branch Deer's herd. Then his mother exhorted hiin in a verse:
“ Follow rather the Banyan, dear; Cultivate not the Branch! Death, with the Banyan, were better far, Than, with the Branch, long life."
And the Banyan Deer made a compact with the men that wherever leaves were tied round a field the deer should not trespass, and he made all the deer keep to the bargain. From that time, they say, the sign of the tying of leaves was seen in the fields.?
This is the end of the Jātaka proper, the “ Story of the Past."
Then the Teacher identified the characters in the story as being himself and his contenporaries in a
'I have tried to imitate the form of riddle in which the verse ap. pears in Pali.
? Very probably the origin of the fable is to be found in a popular explanation of this curious old custom.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
