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