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The Fettered Elephant

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Feb 9th, 2016
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  1. 'Long and long ago, when Devadatta was King of Benares--let all listen
  2. to the Tataka!--an elephant was captured for a time by the king's
  3. hunters and ere he broke free, beringed with a grievous legiron. This
  4. he strove to remove with hate and frenzy in his heart, and hurrying up
  5. and down the forests, besought his brother-elephants to wrench it
  6. asunder. One by one, with their strong trunks, they tried and failed.
  7. At the last they gave it as their opinion that the ring was not to be
  8. broken by any bestial power. And in a thicket, new-born, wet with
  9. moisture of birth, lay a day-old calf of the herd whose mother had
  10. died. The fettered elephant, forgetting his own agony, said: "If I do
  11. not help this suckling it will perish under our feet." So he stood
  12. above the young thing, making his legs buttresses against the uneasily
  13. moving herd; and he begged milk of a virtuous cow, and the calf throve,
  14. and the ringed elephant was the calf's guide and defence. Now the days
  15. of an elephant--let all listen to the Tataka!--are thirty-five years to
  16. his full strength, and through thirty-five Rains the ringed elephant
  17. befriended the younger, and all the while the fetter ate into the flesh.
  18.  
  19. 'Then one day the young elephant saw the half-buried iron, and turning
  20. to the elder said: "What is this?" "It is even my sorrow," said he
  21. who had befriended him. Then that other put out his trunk and in the
  22. twinkling of an eyelash abolished the ring, saying: "The appointed
  23. time has come." So the virtuous elephant who had waited temperately
  24. and done kind acts was relieved, at the appointed time, by the very
  25. calf whom he had turned aside to cherish--let all listen to the Tataka!
  26. for the Elephant was Ananda, and the Calf that broke the ring was none
  27. other than The Lord Himself...'
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