Читать книгу 108 Buddhist Parables and Stories - Olga Gutsol - Страница 4

One day Prince Siddhartha was walking in his father’s royal garden with his cousin Devadatta, who had brought his bow and arrows with him. Suddenly, Devadatta saw a swan flying and shot at it. The arrow pierced the swan’s body and the poor creature fell from the sky. Both the boys ran to get the bird. As Siddhartha could run faster than Devadatta, he reached the swan’s injured body first and found that it was still alive. He gently pulled out the arrow from the wing. He then got a little juice from cool leaves, put it on the wound to stop the bleeding and stroked the frightened swan. When Devadatta came to claim the swan, Prince Siddhartha refused to give it to him.

“Give me my bird! I shot it down,” shouted Devadatta, angry that his cousin keeping the swan away from him.

“No, I am not going to give it to you,” said the prince. “If you had killed it, it would have been yours. But now, since it is only wounded, it belongs to me.”

Devadatta still did not agree and a sharp argument ensued between the two. So both of them decided to go to the king’s court where the counsellors argued the merits of each case. In the end, the king referred the case to his wisest ministers, who after examining the pros and cons, declared, “A life certainly must belong to the one who tries to save it, a life cannot belong to the one who is only trying to destroy it. The wounded swan by right belongs to Siddhartha.”

Yet Devadatta was still adamant in his claim. So the wise judge made Siddhartha and Devadatta stand at a distance apart from each other, and he then put the bird in the middle. As the swan started walking towards its saviour, Siddhartha became the rightful owner of the bird.