The Folly of Garrulity

Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was king of
Benares, his family priest was tawny-brown and had lost
all his teeth. His wife committed sin with another brah-
min. This man was just like the other. The priest tried
times and again to restrain his wife, but could not. Then
he thought, "This my enemy I cannot kill with my own
hands, but I must devise some plan to kill him."

So he came before the king, and said, "O king, your
city is the chiefest city of all India, and you are the chiefest
king : but chief king though you are, your southern gate
is unlucky, and ill put together." "Well now, my teacher,
what is to be done?" "You must bring good luck into it
and set it right." "What is to be done?" "We must pull
down the old door, get new and lucky timbers, do sacrifice
to the spirits that guard the city, and set up the new on
a lucky conjunction of the stars." "So do, then," said
the king.

At that time, the Bodhisatta was a young man named
Takkariya, who was studying under this man.

Now the priest caused the old gate to be pulled down,
and the new was made ready; which done, he went and
said to the king, "The gate is ready, my lord: to-morrow
is an auspicious conjunction ; before the morrow is over,
we must do sacrifice and set up the new gate." "Well, my
teacher, and what is necessary for the rite?" "My lord, a
great gate is possessed and guarded by great divinities.
A brahmin, tawny-brown and toothless, of pure blood on
both sides, must be killed ; his flesh and blood must be
offered in sacrifice, and his body laid beneath, and the
gate raised upon it. This will bring luck to you and
your city." "Very well, my teacher, have such a brahmin
slain, and set up the gate upon him."

The priest was delighted. "To-morrow," said he, "I
shall see the back of my enemy!" Full of energy he
returned to his home, but could not keep a still tongue
in his head, and said quickly to his wife, " Ah, you foul
hag, whom will you have now to take your pleasure with ?
To-morrow I shall kill your leman and make sacrifice of
him." "Why will you kill an innocent man?" "The king
has commanded me to slay and sacrifice a tawny-brown
brahmin, and to set up the city gate upon him. Your
leman is tawny-brown, and I mean to slay him and sacri-
fice him." She sent her paramour a message, saying,
" They say the king wishes to slay a tawny-brown brahmin
in sacrifice ; if you would save your life, flee away in time,
and with you all they who are like you." So the man did:
the news spread abroad in the city, and all those in the
whole city who were tawny-brown fled away.

The priest, nothing aware of his enemy's flight, went
early next morning to the king, and said, "My lord, in
such a place is a tawny-brown brahmin to be found ; have
him taken." The king sent some men for him, but they
saw none, and returning informed the king that he was
fled away. " Search elsewhere," said the king. All over
the city they searched, but found none. " Search quickly!"
said the king. "My lord," they replied, "except your
family priest there is no such other." "A priest," quoth
he, "cannot be killed." "What do you say, my lord?
According to the priest, if the gate is not set up to-day,
the city will be in danger. When the priest explained
the matter, he said that if we let this day go by, the
auspicious moment will not come again until the end of
a year. The city without a gate for a year, what a chance
for our enemies ! Let us kill some one, and sacrifice by
the aid of some other wise brahmin, and set up the gate."
"But is there another wise brahmin like my teacher?"
"There is, my lord, his pupil, a young man named
Takkariya; make him your family priest and do the
lucky ceremony." The king sent for him, and did honour
to him, and made him priest, and commanded to do as
had been said. The young man went to the gate with
a great crowd following. In the king's name they bound
and brought the priest. The Great Being caused a pit to
be dug in the place where the gate was to be set up, and
a tent to be placed over it, and with his teacher entered
into the tent. The teacher beholding the pit, and seeing
no escape, said to the Great Being, "My aim had suc-
ceeded. Fool that I was, I could not keep a still tongue,
but hastily told that wicked woman. I have slain myself
with my own weapon. Then he recited the first stanza :

I spoke in folly, as a frog: might call
Upon a snake i' the forest: so I fall
Into this pit, Takkariya 1 . How true,
Words spoken out of season one must rue!

Then the other addressing him, recited this stanza :

The man who out of season speaks, will go

Like this to ruin, lamentation, woe:

Here you should blame yourself, now you must have

This delved pit, my teacher, for your grave.

To these words he added yet this: "O teacher, not
thou only, but many another likewise, has come to misery
because he set not a watch upon his words." So saying,
he told him a story of the past to prove it.

Once upon a time, they say, there lived a courtesan
in Benares named Kali, and she had a brother named
Tundila. In one day Kali would earn a thousand pieces
of money. Now Tundila was a debauchee, a drunkard, a
gambler ; she gave him money, and whatever he got he
wasted. Do what she would to restrain him, restrain him
she could not. One day he was beaten at hazard, and
lost the very clothes he was clad in. Wrapping about
him a rag of loin-cloth, he repaired to his sister's house.
But command had been given by her to her serving-
maids, that if Tundila should come, they were to give
him nothing, but to take him by the throat and cast him
out. And so they did: he stood by the threshold, and
made his moan. Now a certain gild-merchant's son, who
used constantly to give Kali a thousand pieces of money,
on that day happened to see him, and says he, " Why are
you weeping, Tundila?" "Master," said he, "I have been
beaten at the dice, and came to my sister ; and the serv-
ing-maids took me by the throat and cast me out."
" Well, stay here," quoth the other, " and I will speak to
your sister." He entered the house, and said, "Your
brother stands waiting, clad in a rag of loin-cloth. Why
do you not give him something to wear?" "Indeed," she
replied, " I will give nothing. If you are fond of him, give
it vourself." Now in that house of ill fame the fashion
was this : out of every thousand pieces of money received,
five hundred were for the woman, five hundred were the
price of clothes, perfumes and garlands; the men who
visited that house received garments to clothe themselves
in, and stayed the night there, then on the next day they
put off" the garments they had received, and put on those
they had brought, and went their ways. On this occasion
the merchant's son put on the garments provided for him,
and gave his own clothes to Tundila. He put them on,
and with loud shouts hastened to the tavern. But Kali
ordered her women that when the young man should
depart next day, they should take away his clothes.
Accordingly, when he came forth, they ran up from this
side and that, like so many robbers, and took the clothes
from him, and stript him naked, saying, " Now, young sir,
be off!" Thus they got rid of him. Away he went naked:
the people made sport of him, and he was ashamed, and
lamented, saying, " It is my own doing, because I could
not keep watch over my lips!" To make this clear, the
Great Being recited the third stanza:

Why ask of Tundila how he should fare

At Kalika his sister's hands? now see!
My clothes are gone, naked am I and bare ;

'Tis very like what happened late to thee.

Another person relates this story. By carelessness of
the goat-herds, two rams fell a-fighting on a pasture at
Benares. As they Avere hard at it, a certain bird, a
fork-tail, thought to himself, " These two will crack their
polls and perish ; I must restrain them." So he tried to
restrain them by calling out "Uncle, don't fight!" Not
a word he got from them : in the midst of the battle,
mounting first on the back, then on the head, he besought
them to stop, but could do nothing. At last he cried,
"Fight, then, but kill me first!" and placed himself
between the two heads. They went on butting away at
each other. The bird was crushed as by a pounder, and
came to destruction by his own act. To explain this
other tale the Great Being repeated the fourth stanza:

Between two fighting- rams a fork-tail flew,
Though in the fray he had no part nor share.
The two rams' heads did crush him then and there.
He in his fate was very like to you !

Another. There was a tal-tree which the cow-herds
set great store by. The people of Benares seeing it sent
a certain man up the tree to gather fruit. As he was
throwing down the fruit, a black snake issuing forth from
an ant-hill began to ascend the tree; they who stood
below tried to drive him off striking at him with sticks
and other things, but could not. Then they called out to
the other, "A snake is climbing the tree !" and he in terror
uttered a loud cry. Those who stood below seized a
stout cloth by the four corners, and bade him fall into
the cloth. He let himself drop, and fell in the midst of
the cloth between the four of them ; swift as the wind he
came, and the men could not hold him, but j oiled their
four heads together and broke them, and so died. To
explain this story the Great Being recited the fifth
stanza :

Four men, to save a fellow from his fate,

Held the four corners of a cloth below.
They all fell dead, each with a broken pate.

These men were very like to you, I trow.

Others again tell this. Some goat-thieves who lived at
Benares having stolen a she-goat one night, determined to
make a meal in the forest : to prevent her bleating they
muffled her snout and tied her up in a bamboo clump.
Next day, on their way to kill her, they forgot the chopper.
"Now we'll kill the goat and cook her," said they; "bring
the chopper here ! " But nobody had one. " Without a
chopper," said they, "we cannot eat the beast, even if
we kill her : let her go ! this is due to some merit of hers."
So they let her go. Now it happened that a worker in
bamboos, who had been there for a bundle of them, left
a basket-maker's knife there hidden among the leaves,
intending to use it when he came again. But the goat,
thinking herself to be free, began playing about under
the bamboo clump, and kicking with her hind legs made
the knife drop. The thieves heard the sound of the
falling knife, and on coming to find out what it was, saw
it, to their great delight ; then they killed the goat, and
ate her flesh. Thus to explain how this she-goat was
killed by her own act, the Great Being recited the sixth
stanza :

A she-goat, in a bamboo thicket bound,
Frisking- about, herself a knife had found.
With that same knife they cut the creature's throat.
It strikes me you are very like that goat.

After recounting this, he explained, " But they who are
moderate of speech, by watching their words have often
been freed from the fate of death," and then told a story
of fairies.

A hunter, we are told, who lived in Benares, being
once in the region of Himalaya, by some means or other
captured a brace of supernatural beings, a fairy and
her husband; and them he took and presented to the
king. The king had never seen such beings before.
"Hunter," quoth he, "what kind of creatures are these?"
Said the man, " My lord, these can sing with a honey-voice,
they dance delightfully: no men are able to dance or sing
as they can." The king bestowed a great reward on the
hunter, and commanded the fairies to sing and dance. But
they thought, "If we are not able to convey the full sense of
our song, the song will be a failure, they will abuse and hurt
us; and then again, those who speak much speak falsely":
so for fear of some falsehood or other they neither sang
nor danced, for all the king begged them again and again.
At last the king grew angry, and said, "Kill these creatures,
and cook them, and serve them up to me." This com-
mand he delivered in the words of the seventh stanza:

No gods are these nor heaven's musicianers,
Beasts brought by one who fain would fill his purse.
So for my supper let them cook me one,
And one for breakfast by the morrow's sun.

Then the fairy-dame thought to herself, "Now the
king is angry; without doubt he will kill us. Now it is
time to speak." And immediately she recited a stanza:

A hundred thousand ditties all sung wrong
All are not worth a tithe of one good song.
To sing ill is a crime; and this is why
(Not out of folly) fairy would not try.

The king, pleased with the fairy, at once recited a
stanza :

She that hath spoken, let her go, that she
The Himalaya hill again may see,
But let them take and kill the other one,
And for to-morrow's breakfast have him done.

But the other fairy thought, "If I hold my tongue,
surely the king will kill me; now is the time to speak";
and then he recited another stanza :

The kine depend upon the clouds l , and men upon the kine,
And I, king! depend on thee, on me this wife of J mine.
Let one, before he seek the hills, the other's fate divine.

When he had said this, he repeated a couple of
stanzas, to make it clear, that they had been silent not
from unwillingness to obey the king's word, but because
they saw that speaking would be a mistake.

monarch! other peoples, other ways:

'Tis very hard to keep you clear of blame.
The very thing which for the one wins praise,

Another finds reproof for just the same.
Some one there is who each man foolish finds;

Each by imagination different still;
All different, many men and many minds,

No universal law is one man's will.

Quoth the king, " He speaks the truth ; 'tis a sapient
fairy"; and much pleased he recited the last stanza:

Silent they were, the fairy and his mate:
And he who now did utter speech for fear,

Unhurt, free, happy, let him go his gait.
This is the speech brings good, as oft we hear.

Then the king placed the two fairies in a golden cage,
and sending for the huntsman, made him set them free in
the same place where he had caught them.

The Great Being added, "See, my teacher! In this
manner the fairies kept watch on their words, and by
speaking at the right time were set free for their well
speaking; but you by your ill speaking have come to
great misery." Then after shewing him this parallel, he
comforted him, saying, " Fear not, my teacher ; I will save
your life." "Is there indeed a way," asked the other,
"how you can save me?" He replied, "It is not yet the
proper conjunction of the planets." He let the day go
by, and in the middle watch of the night brought thither
a dead goat. "Go when you will, brahmin, and live," said
he, then let him go and never a soul the wiser. And he
did sacrifice with the flesh of the goat, and set up the gate
upon it.