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STORIES OF THE PLOUGHMAN AND OTHERS 239 to the doctrine, the king hid her in his own house. The god appeared in person and said to him, “Well done! Well done, sir ! You are not to be moved at all from right-belief, like a mountain from its base. King, you have been seen to be just as Sakra described you in his assembly. Such people do not speak falsely.”
Then he gave Sreņika a pearl necklace with a row of constellations made by day (as it were) and also a pair of balls. “Whoever mends this necklace when it is broken will die.” With these words, the god vanished like a dream. Joyfully the king gave Queen Celaņā the divine beautiful necklace, but the pair of balls to Nandā. Nandā, hightempered, jealously thought, “I am suitable for that gift," and threw the pair of balls against a pillar and burst them. From one shone a pair of earrings like a spotless pair of moons. From the other a pair of linen garments came out. Nandā took these divine gifts joyfully. Unexpected acquisition by people of high rank is like a cloudless rain.
The king asked Kapilā, “ Give alms to sādhus with faith. I shall provide you who are without means for alms with heaps of money." Kapilā said, “ If you made me of solid gold or if you kill me, yet I will not commit this sin."
The king said to the butcher Kāla, “Give up slaughter, I will give you much money. You are a butcher from greed for money." The butcher Kāla said: “What fault is there in butchery by which men live? I will certainly not give it up.” Saying, “How will he carry on the business of slaughter here?” the king threw him in a hidden well and kept him prisoner a day and night.
Then the king went and declared to the Blessed One, “The butcher has given up slaughter this day and night, Lord.” The Omniscient replied, “ O king, even in the hidden well he has killed five hundred buffaloes, after making them out of clay himself.” Śreņika went and saw that himself and was much depressed from that.“ Alas ! my former karma is as the Blessed One said, not otherwise.”
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