C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
The Buddhist Duty of Courtesy to Animals
By Vishnu Sharma (Pilpay) (c. 1000 B.C.?)
“S
The brahman went his way to a merchant, and got into a discussion with him as to whose oxen in the town were strong. “Oh, so-and-so’s, or so-and-so’s,” said the merchant. “But,” added he, “there are no oxen in the town which can compare with mine for real strength.” Said the brahman, “I have a bull who can pull a hundred loaded carts.” “Where’s such a bull to be found?” laughed the merchant. “I’ve got him at home,” said the brahman.—“Make it a wager.”—“Certainly,” said the brahman, and staked a thousand pieces. Then he loaded a hundred carts with sand, gravel, and stones, and leashed the lot together, one behind the other, by cords from the axle-tree of the one in front to the trace-bar of its successor. This done, he bathed Nandi-Visala, gave him a measure of perfumed rice to eat, hung a garland round his neck, and harnessed him all alone to the leading cart. The brahman in person took his seat upon the pole, and flourished his goad in the air, shouting, “Now then, you rascal! pull them along, you rascal!”
“I’m not the rascal he calls me,” thought the Future Buddha to himself; and so he planted his four feet like so many posts, and budged not an inch.
Straightway the merchant made the brahman pay over the thousand pieces. His money gone, the brahman took his bull out of the cart and went home, where he lay down on his bed in an agony of grief. When Nandi-Visala strolled in and found the brahman a prey to such grief, he went up to him and inquired if the brahman were taking a nap. “How should I be taking a nap, when I have had a thousand pieces won of me?” “Brahman, all the time I have lived in your house, have I ever broken a pot, or squeezed up against anybody, or made messes about?”—“Never, my child.”—“Then why did you call me a rascal? It’s you who are to blame, not I. Go and bet him two thousand this time. Only remember not to miscall me rascal again.”
When he heard this, the brahman went off to the merchant and laid a wager of two thousand. Just as before, he leashed the hundred carts to one another, and harnessed Nandi Visala, very spruce and fine, to the leading cart. If you ask how he harnessed him, well, he did it in this way: first he fastened the cross-yoke on to the pole; then he put the bull in on one side, and made the other fast by fastening a smooth piece of wood from the cross-yoke on to the axle-tree, so that the yoke was taut and could not skew around either way. Thus a single bull could draw a cart made to be drawn by two. So now seated on the pole, the brahman stroked Nandi-Visala on the back, and called on him in this style: “Now then, my fine fellow! pull them along, my fine fellow!” With a single pull the Future Buddha tugged along the whole string of the hundred carts, till the hindermost stood where the foremost had started. The merchant rich in herds paid up the two thousand pieces he had lost to the brahman. Other folks, too, gave large sums to the Future Buddha, and the whole passed into the hands of the brahman. Thus did he gain greatly by reason of the Future Buddha.
When he had thus ended his lesson as to speaking only words of kindness, the Master identified the Birth by saying:—“Ananda was the brahman of those days, and I myself Nandi-Visala.”