Mittavinda-Jātaka

Translated from the Pāli by
Robert Chalmers, B.A., of Oriel College, Oxford
Under the Editorship of Professor E. B. Cowell
Published 1969 For the Pāli Text Society.
First Published by The Cambridge University Press in 1895

This work is in the Public Domain. The Pali Text Society owns the copyright."

"From four to eight." — This story was told by the Master while at Jetavana, concerning an unruly Brother. The incidents are the same as those in the previous story of Mittavindaka,^[1] but belong to the days of the Buddha Kassapa.

[414] Now at that time one of the damned who had put on the circlet and was suffering the tortures of hell, asked the Bodhisatta — "Lord, what sin have I committed?" The Bodhisatta detailed the man's evil deeds to hire and uttered this stanza: —

From four to eight, to sixteen thence, and so
To thirty-two insatiate greed doth go,
— Still pressing on till insatiety
Doth win the circlet's griding misery.^[2]

So saying he went back to the Realm of Devas, but the other abode in hell till his sin had been purged from him. Then he passed thence to fare according to his deserts.

His lesson ended, the Master identified the Birth by saying, "This unruly Brother was then Mittavindaka and I the Deva."

^[1] No. 41.

^[2] Part of these lines occur in the Pañca Tantra 98.