Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish: Buddha and the gospel of buddhism (London, 1916)

Chaddanta Jataka
and dry leaves and red ants fell on her, while Maha-
subhadda stood to leeward, so that flowers and pollen and
green leaves fell on her. Cullasubhadda thought, “ He
let the flowers and pollen fall on his favourite wife, and
the twigs and red ants on me,’ and she bore him a grudge.
Upon another occasion, when a lotus with seven shoots
had been offered to him, he presented it to Mahasub-
hadda.
Then Cullasubhadda was still more estranged, and she
went to a shrine of private Buddhas and made offerings
of wild fruits, and prayed: ‘ Hereafter, when I pass
away, I would be reborn as the daughter of a king,
that I may become the queen of the King of Benares.
Then shall I be dear to him, and may work my will,
and I will have him to send a hunter with a poisoned
arrow to kill this elephant and bring me his sixfold tusks.’
And in time to come she becomes the chief queen of the
King of Benares. She remembers her former life, and
thinks: ‘ My prayer has been fulfilled.’ She feigns sickness,
and persuades the king to grant her a boon, which alone
will restore her health and spirits; what the boon is she
will tell when all the king’s huntsmen are assembled. It
is that some one of them should bring her the tusks of
Chaddanta. She opens a window and points to the
Himalayas in the North and says:
There dwells invincible in might,
This elephant, six-tusked and white,
Lord of a herd eight thousand strong
Whose tusks are like to chariot poles,
A nd wind-swift they to guard or strike !
If they should see a child of man
Their anger should destroy him utterly,

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