The Village in the Jungle
broken grains, and cakes from the dust. She offered the kunji to the Buddha, and he took a mouthful and tasted the delight of its sweetness, but to try her he spat it out on the ground, and said, "Friend, since you do not know how to cook, why do you waste my rice?" Amara Devi took no offence, but offered him the cakes, saying, "Friend, if the kunji does not please you, will you eat of the cakes?" And the Buddha did the same with the cakes. Then Amara Devi offered him the rice, and again he spat out the rice, and pretended to be very angry, and smeared the food upon her head and body, and made her stand in the sun before the door. The girl showed no anger, but went out and stood in the sun. Then the Buddha said, "Amara Devi, friend, come here," and she came to him, and he took her as his wife, and lived with her in the city in the gatekeeper's house. And she still thought he was a tailor, and one day he sent two men to her with a thousand gold pieces to try her. The men took the gold pieces, and with them tempted her, but she said, "These thousand gold pieces are unworthy to wash my husband's feet." And three times she was tempted, and at last he told them to bring her to him by force. So they brought her to him by force, and when she came into his presence she did not know him, for he sat in state in his robes, but she smiled and wept when she looked at him. The Buddha asked her why she smiled and wept, and she said, "Lord, I smiled with joy to see your divine splendour and the merit acquired by you in innumerable births; but when I thought that in this birth you might by some evil act, such as this, by seducing another's wife, earn the pains of death, I wept for love of you." Then the Buddha sent her back to the house of the gatekeeper, and he told the king and queen that he had found a princess for his wife. And the queen gave jewels and gold ornaments to Amara Devi, and she was taken in a great chariot to the house of the Buddha, and from that day she lived happily with him as his wife.'

The other pilgrims, except the fisher, who had fallen asleep, were delighted with Karlinahami's story, and they wanted her to tell them another. But she was afraid to offend the old man again, so she refused. The old man read to them a while, and gradually, one after the other, they dropped off to sleep. And in the morning they started off again down the long white road; and at midday, when they were hot and footsore, the wall of jungle before them parted suddenly, and they came out into a great fertile plain. The green rice-fields stretched out before them, dotted over with watch-huts and clumps of cocoanut-trees and red-roofed houses, and the immense white domes of dagobas gleaming in the sun. Beyond shone the 
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