Vessantara-Jataka in Pali and English - MyWebSpace

Translation 553 Vessantara-Jåtaka
[Fausbøll, Jåtaka, vol. VI, p. 553]
Meanwhile Jūjaka beat the children as he led them along. Then the boy said lamenting:
"How true that saying seems to be which men are wont to tell:
Who has no mother of his own is fatherless as well. 1
Life's nothing to us: let us die; we are his chattels now,
This cruel greedy violent man, who drives us like his cow.
These clusters of rose-apple trees, which droop around the lake,
And all the verdure of the woods, O Kaṇhā, we forsake.
Fig-tree and jack-fruit, banyan tree, and every tree that grows,
Yea all the many kinds of fruit, O Kaṇhā, we forsake.
There stand they like a pleasant park, there cool the river flows;
The place where once we used to play, O Kaṇhā, we forsake.
The fruit that once we used to eat, the flowers we used to wear,
That yonder grow upon the hill, O Kaṇhā, we forsake.
And all the little pretty toys that once we played with there,
The horses, oxen, elephants, O Kaṇhā, we forsake."
Again the brahmin fell down in a rough place: the cord fell from his hand, and the
children, trembling like wounded fowls, ran away without stopping back to their father.
Explaining this, the Master said:
"Now Jāli and Kaṇhājinā, thus by the brahmin led,
Somehow got free, and then away and on and on they fled."
1
Reading: sakā mātā, pitā n’ atthi (B d has pitā). So the Burmese version.