Editor's note: Dear Visitors and Dhamma Friends,
Thanks the generosity of the Pali Text Society, we are glad to be able to provide the Jataka-Collection here as a gift of Dhamma (Info). Still there are works to do like cross-links, adding the numbers of verses... If you like to get involved to make more out of this gift, please feel invited and visit us on our working place or send us an email.
"What was the evil," etc.
This story the Master whilst living at Jetavana told concerning an unruly Brother. The incident that led to the story will be found in the Mahāmittavinda Birth.
Now this Mittavindaka, when cast into the sea, showed himself very covetous, and going on to still greater excess came to the place of torment inhabited by beings doomed to hell. And he made his way into the Ussada hell, taking it to be a city, and there he got a wheel as sharp as a razor fixed upon his head. Then the Bodhisatta in the shape of a god went on a mission to Ussada. On seeing him, Mittavindaka repeated the first stanza in the form of a question: —
[207] The Bodhisatta, on hearing this, uttered the second stanza:
Then Mittavindaka replied in a third stanza:
The Bodhisatta then repeated the remaining stanzas:
°° But while Mittavindaka was still speaking, the wheel fell upon him and crushed him, so that he could say no more. But the divine being returned straight to his celestial abode.
[208] The Master, his lesson ended, identified the Birth: "At that time the unruly Brother was Mittavindaka, and I myself was the divine being."
Next: No. 370.: Palāsa-Jātaka.