Dictionary of Pali Proper Names v2.c34.398

v2.c34.398

Losaka Jātaka (No. 41).—In the time of Kassapa Buddha there lived a monk who was maintained by a rich man of the district. Into the monastery belonging to this rich man there came one day an arahant, and the former, liking his appearance, asked him to stay in the monastery, promising to look after him. The arahant agreed, but the incumbent of the monastery grew jealous and told their patron that the arahant was lazy and good for nothing. Some food sent by the patron for the arahant the incumbent threw into the embers. The arahant, reading his thoughts, left and went elsewhere. The monk was seized with remorse and was reborn in hell. In five hundred successive births he was a Yakkha, with never enough to eat; during a further five hundred births he was a dog. Then he was born, under the name of Mittavindaka, in a poor family in Kāsi. Because of him, dire misfortune befell the family, and he was driven out. In Benares he became a charity scholar under the Bodhisatta, who was a teacher there, but he was so quarrelsome that he was sent away. He married a poor woman and had two children. For a while he was a teacher, but the village in which he lived earned the king's displeasure seven times, their houses caught fire and the water dried up. Having discovered the cause, the villagers drove out Mittavindaka and his family. In a haunted forest the wife and children were eaten up by demons.