Jataka 130 Kosiya
Kosiya Jataka
Once upon a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born a Brahmin in a very distinguished family. After perfecting his education at Takkasila, he became a teacher of world wide fame in benares. To him flocked as pupils the young nobles and Brahmins from all the princely and wealthy families. Now a country Brahmin, who had learned from the Bodhisatta the three Vedas and the eighteen Sciences, and who stopped on in benares to look after his estate came two or three times every day to listen to the Bodhisatta’s teachings. And this Brahmin had a wife who was a bad, wicked woman. And everything came to pass as above. When the Brahmin explained how it was that he could not get away to listen to his master’s teachings, the Bodhisatta, who knew that the brahmin’s wife was only feigning sickness, thought to himself, “I will tell him what physic will cure the creature.” So he said to the Brahmin, “Get her no more dainties, my son, but collect the stalings of cows and therein souse five kinds of fruit and so forth, and let the lot pickle in a new copper pot till the whole savours of the metal. Then take a rope or cord or stick and go to your wife, and tell her plainly she must either swallow the safe cure you have brought her, or else work for her food. (And here you will repeat certain lines which I will tell you.) If she refuses the remedy, then threaten to let her have a taste of the rope or stick, and to drag her about for a time by the hair, while you pummel her with your fists. You will find that at the mere threat she will be up and about her work.”
So off went the brahmin and brought his wife a mess prepared as the Bodhisatta had directed.
“Who prescribed this?” said she.
“The master,” said her husband.
“Take it away, I won’t have it.”
“So you won’t have it, eh?” said the young Brahmin, taking up the rope end; “well then, you’ve either got to swallow down that safe cure or else to work for honest fare.” So saying he uttered this stanza:-
You may ail or eat; which shall it be?
For you can’t do both, my Kosiya.
Terrified by this, the woman Kosiya realized from the moment the master interfered how impossible it was to deceive him, and, getting up, went about her work. And the consciousness that the master knew her wickedness made her repent, and become as good as she had formerly been wicked.