The Bodhisatta was once a famous teacher in Takkasīlā. A young brahmin of Benares came to study under him and, after completing his course, went back home. His mother, however, was anxious that he should renounce the world and tend Aggibhagavā in the forest. She accordingly sent him back to the Teacher that he might learn the "Asātamanta" (Dolour Text). The Teacher had a mother aged 120 years, on whom he himself waited. When the youth came back to learn the Asātamanta, he was asked to look after the old woman. She, falling in love with him, hatched a plot to kill her son.

The Bodhisatta, having been told of this plot, made a wooden figure and placed it in his bed. The mother, thinking to kill her son, struck it with an axe, and discovering that she had been betrayed, fell down dead. The youth, having thus learnt the Asātamanta, returned to his parents and became a hermit. Kāpilānī was the mother in the story, Mahā Kassapa the father and Ananda the pupil.

This story, together with the Ummadantī Jātaka, was related to a passion-tossed monk to warn him of the evil nature of women. J.i.285-9.


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