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BUDDHISM
would give then." Without a second thought he gave away a wonderful elephant on which the well-being of his kingdoin depended, and was consequently driven into exile by his indignant people, together with his loyal queen and two little children. And when he was approached in the wilderness by an ugly old Brālıman who demanded the children as slaves, they were given without a qualm; the queen was demanded, and she too was given. But in the end, the Brāhman revealed that he was Indra, the king of the gods, and stated that he had dcscended to test the saintly human king, and so all ended well. In this case, the temptation of Indra having failed, the god was gracious in defcat.
Even the crudest, most elementary mind cannot but be amazed and outraged by such demonstrations of saintly indisference to the normal values of human welfare-particularly since nothing whatsoever is gained from them. For what does it really matter if a single dove is preserved from the talons of a hawk,86 a new born litter of tiger-kittens rescued from starvation,88 or a senile, nasty old Brāhman gratisied in his greed and lust by the enslavement of a little prince and princess? The cruel course of nature is not altered. Indecd, the Bodhisattva's absurd sacrifices often support and give voluntary corroboration to the brutal laws that prevail where the struggle for life goes on in its crude, unmitigated, animal-demonic form; while in the case of the Brāhman and the young prince and princess, the first dictate of human morality would seem to have been violated.
In terms, however, of the basic problem and task of the Bo dhisattva, it is precisely the apparent senselessness, even indecency, of the sacrifice that makes the difference; for to refuse a paradoxical surrender would be to subscribe (if only by nega
86 Asvaghosa, Suträlan kära 64. (A fine translation will be found in E. W. Burlingame, Buddhist Parables, New Haven, 1922, pp. 314-824.)
86 Jätakamála 1. (Speyer, op. cit., pp. 1-8.)
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