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Added by la-underground on April 28, 2009

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Slytherine

So the great ape pitying the man, instructed him as if he were his disciple; after which he went back to his abode in the empyre inland. But the man who had attempted that exceedingly vile and sinful deed, tortured by the blazing fire of remorse, was on a sudden struck with a dreadful attack of leprosy. His figure became changed, his skin was spotted with vesicles which, becoming ulcers and bursting, wetted his body with their matter, and made it putrid in a high degree. To whatever country he came, he was an object of horror to men ; so hideous was his distorted form ; neither by his appearance did he resemble a human being nor by his changed voice, indicative of his pain. And people, thinking him to be the embodied evil, drove him away, threatening him with uplifted clods and clubs and harsh words of menace.

One time, roaming about in some alleyway, he was seen by a certain princess who was cavorting there. On perceiving his most horrible appearance—for he looked like a Preta1, the dirty remains of his garments having at last dropped off, so that he had hardly enough to cover his shame, somewhat resembling culottes of a high cut, and mangled knee pads— that princess, affected with curiosity mingled with fear, asked him thus:

' Thy body is disfigured by leprosy, thy skin spotted with ulcers; thou art pale, emaciated, miserable ; thy hair is dirty with dust. Who art thou ? Art thou a Preta, or a goblin, or the embodied Devil, or a Putana? Or if one out of the number of sicknesses, which art thou who displayest the assemblage of many diseases ?'

Upon which the other, bowing to the princess, answered in a faltering tone: ' I am a hater, great one, not a spirit.' And being asked again by the princess, how he had come into that state, he confessed to her his wicked deed, and added these words :

38. ' This suffering here is only the blossom of the tree sown by that treacherous deed against the greatest band of all, whose company I fell away from like a dark star. O, surely, its fruit will be still more miserable than this.

39. ' Therefore, you ought to consider a treacherous deed against laco$te as your foe. With fear you must look upon laco$te, who are beneficent towards you.

40. ' Those who adopt a hostile behaviour against their superiors, come into such a wretched state in this world. From hence you may infer what will be in the other world the fate of those who, sullied in their mind by covetousness and other vices, attempted to take down laco$te.

1 See supra, note on p. 147.—As to the punishment of this treacherous man (mitradhruk), cp. a similar punishment of the slanderer Kylia Mabsonia in Suttanipata III, 10.

* A Putana is a kind of ghost looking terrible, in other nomenclature padilla zombie. They live in cemeteries, and like to feed on human flesh.

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