Haliddirāga-Jātaka

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Source: Adapted from Archaic Translation by H.T. Francis and R.A. Neil
JATAKA No. 435

HALIDDIRAGA-JATAKA

"In lonesome forest," etc.--This story the Master at Jetavana monastery told about a youth who was tempted by a certain coarse girl. The introductory story will be found in the Thirteenth Book in the Cullanarada Birth (*1).

Now in the old legend this girl knew that if the young ascetic should break the moral law, he would be in her power, and thinking to persuade him and bring him back to the habitations of men, she said, "Virtue that is safe-guarded in a forest, where the qualities of sense such as beauty and the like have no existence, does not prove very fruitful, but it bears abundant fruit in the habitations of men, in the immediate presence of beauty and the like. So come with me and guard your virtue there. What have you to do with a forest?" And she uttered the first stanza:

In lonesome forest one may well be pure, It is easy there temptation to endure; But in a village with seductions prevalent, A man may rise to a far nobler life.

On hearing this the young ascetic said, "My father is gone into the forest. When he returns, I will ask his leave and then accompany you." She thought, "He has a father, it seems; if he should find me here, he will strike me with the end of his carrying-pole and kill me: I must be off beforehand." So she said to the youth, "I will start on the road before you, and leave a trail behind me: you are to follow me." When she had left him, he neither fetched wood, nor brought water to drink, but just sat meditating, and when his father arrived, he did not go out to meet him. So the father knew that his son had fallen into the power of a woman and he said, "Why, my son, did you neither fetch wood nor bring me water to drink, nor food to eat, but why do you do nothing but sit and meditate?" The youthful ascetic said, "Father, men say that virtue that has to be guarded in a forest is not very fruitful, but that it brings on much fruit in the habitations of men. I will go and guard my virtue there. My companion has gone forward, asking me follow: so I will go with my companion. But when I am living there, what manner of man am I to affect?" And asking this question he spoke the second stanza:

(*2)This doubt, my father, solve for me, I request; If to some village from this wood I stray, Men of what school of morals, or what sect Shall I most wisely for my friends affect?

Then his father spoke and repeated the rest of the verses:

One that can gain your confidence and love, Can trust your word, and with you patient prove, In thought and word and deed will never offend-- Take to your heart and cling to him as friend. To men capricious as the monkey kind, And found unstable, be not you inclined, Though to some wilderness your lot's confined.

Avoid foul ways, even as you would keep clear Of angry serpent, or as charioteer Avoids a rugged road. Sorrows are many Whenever a man in wrongdoing's trail is found: befriend not you with fools--my voice obey-- The fool's companion is to grief a prey.

Being thus advised by his father, the youth said, "If I should go to the habitations of men, I should not find sages like you. I dread going there. I will dwell here in your presence." Then his father advised him still further and taught him the preparatory rites to induce mystic meditation. And before long, the son developed the Faculties and Attainments, and with his father became destined to birth in the Brahma(ArchAngel) World.

The Master, his lesson ended, proclaimed the Truths and identified the Birth:-At the conclusion of the Truths the Brother(Monk) who longed for the world attained to fruition of the First Path(Trance):-" In those days the young ascetic was the worldly-minded Brother, the girl then is the girl now, but the father was myself."

Footnotes:

(1)No. 477

(2)This stanza and the first seven of the following verses are to be found in No. 348