The Loquacious Brahmin

Once on a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in
Benares, the Bodhisatta was one of the king's courtiers.
And the king's family priest of those days was so talkative
and longwinded that, when he once started, no one else
could get a word in. So the king cast about for someone
to cut the priest short, and looked high and low for such
an one. Now at that time there was a cripple in Benares
who was a wonderful marksman with stones, and the boys
used to put him on a little cart and draw him to the gates
of Benares, where there is a large branching banyan-tree
covered with leaves. There they would gather round and
give him half-pence, saying ' Make an elephant,' or ' Make
a horse.' And the cripple would throw stone after stone
till he had cut the foliage into the shapes asked for. And
the ground was covered with fallen leaves.

On his way to his pleasaunce the king came to the
spot, and all the boys scampered off in fear of the king,
leaving the cripple there helpless. At the sight of the
litter of leaves the king asked, as he rode by in his
chariot, who had cut the leaves off. And he was told
that the cripple had done it. Thinking that here might
be a way to stop the priest's mouth, the king asked where
the cripple was, and was shewn him sitting at the foot
of the tree. Then the king had him brought to him and,
motioning his retinue to stand apart, said to the cripple,
" I have a very talkative priest. Do you think you could
stop his talking ? "

"Yes, sire, if I had a peashooter full of dry goat's
dung," said the cripple. Then the king had him taken
to the palace and set with a peashooter full of dry goat's
dung behind a curtain with a slit in it, facing the priest's
seat. When the brahmin came to wait upon the king
and was seated on the seat prepared for him, his majesty
started a conversation. And the priest forthwith mono-
polized the conversation, and no one else could get a
word in. Hereon the cripple shot the pellets of goat's
dung one by one, like flies, through the slit in the curtain
right into the priest's gullet. And the brahmin swallowed
the pellets down as they came, like so much oil, till all
had disappeared. When the whole peashooter-full of
pellets was lodged in the priest's stomach, they swelled
to the size of half a peck ; and the king, knowing they
were all gone, addressed the brahmin in these words:
"Reverend sir, so talkative are you, that you have
swallowed down a peashooter-full of goat's dung without
noticing it. That's about as much as you will be able
to take at a sitting. Now go home and take a dose of
panick seed and water by way of emetic, and put yourself
right again."

From that day the priest kept his mouth shut and
sat as silent during conversation as though his lips were
sealed.

"Well, my ears are indebted to the cripple for this
relief," said the king, and bestowed on him four villages,
one in the North, one in the South, one in the West, and
one in the East, producing a hundred thousand a year.

The Bodhisatta drew near to the king and said, " In
this world, sire, skill should be cultivated by the wise.
Mere skill in aiming has brought this cripple all this
prosperity." So saying he uttered this stanza:

Prize skill, and note the marksman lame;
Four villages reward his aim.