Note 16 — Chapter XXVII

Once on a time two men remained for the same length of time fasting on the banks of the Ganges, one a Bráhman and the other a Chaṇḍála. Of those two, the Bráhman being overpowered with hunger, and seeing some Nishádas16 come that way bringing fish and eating them, thus reflected in his folly—“O happy in the world are these fishermen, sons of female slaves though they be, for they eat to their fill of the fresh meat of fish!” But the other, who was a Chaṇḍála, thought, the moment he saw those fishermen, “Out on these destroyers of life, and devourers of raw flesh! So why should I stand here and behold their faces?” Saying this to himself, he closed his eyes and remained buried in his own thoughts. And in course of time those two, the Bráhman and the Chaṇḍála, died of starvation; the Bráhman was eaten by dogs on the bank, the Chaṇḍála rotted in the water of the Ganges. So that Bráhman, not having disciplined his spirit, was born in the family of a fisherman, but owing to the virtue of the holy place, he remembered his former existence. As for that Chaṇḍála, who possessed self-control, and whose mind was not marred by passion, he was born as a king in a palace on that very bank of the Ganges, and recollected his former birth. And of those two, who were born with a remembrance of their former existence, the one suffered misery being a fisherman, the other being a king enjoyed happiness.