[109] 12.
"[Your lotus pond] has flights of stairs with slabs of gold, and is strewn about with golden sand;
there the lovely sogandhika lilies grow, pure of scent, delighting the mind.
It is covered about with trees of many kinds, fanned with fragrances of many kinds,
covered over with lotuses of many kinds, and strewn with white lotuses.
Stirred by the breeze, they breathe forth their perfume, sweet and pleasing;
it resounds with the calls of swans and herons and rings with the cries of cakkavāka birds;
it is thronged with flocks of birds of many kinds, filled with many a varied cry;
the trees bear fruits of many kinds, the groves bear garlands of blossom of many kinds.
Among human beings there is no city such as this is.
Many mansions are yours, made of gold and made of silver;
blazing in their splendor, they shine to the four quarters all around.
Five hundred slave-women are yours, these who are your attendants;
they wear armlets of gold and are adorned in garments of gold.
Many couches are yours, made of gold and made of silver,
spread with hides of the kadalī deer, made ready, laid with fleecy coverlets,
whereon, when you have retired to rest, you have every desire fulfilled.
When midnight has come, rising from there you go forth,
going to the garden-ground, round about the lotus pond.
You stand upon its bank, upon the fair green turf;
and then the crop-eared dog devours you limb by limb.
And when you have been devoured, reduced to a chain of bones,
you plunge into the lotus pond, and your body becomes as it was before.
Then, whole in every limb and member, most lovely, fair to behold,
wrapping yourself in a garment, you come into my presence.
What evil deed, pray, was done by body, by speech, or by mind?
As the result of what deed (kamma) does the crop-eared dog devour you limb by limb?"
"In Kimbilā there was a householder, a lay follower (upāsaka) possessed of faith;
I was his wife — immoral, an adulteress.
While I was betraying him thus, my husband said this to me:
'It is not seemly, it is not proper, that you should betray me.'
Then I spoke a dreadful oath, a false speech (musāvāda):
'I do not betray you, whether by body or by mind;
and if I do betray you, whether by body or by mind,
then may this crop-eared dog devour me limb by limb!'
The result of that deed and of that false speech — of both together —
I have undergone for seven hundred years;
and because of it the crop-eared dog devours me limb by limb."
"And you, sire (deva), have been of great service: for my benefit you came here.
I am well freed from the crop-eared one — sorrowless, with danger from no quarter.
I do not [merely] pay homage to you, sire; with palms joined I beg you:
enjoy pleasures more than human (amānusā kāmā) — take delight, sire, together with me."
"Pleasures more than human I have enjoyed; I have taken delight together with you.
I beg you, O lovely one: lead me back quickly."
The Kaṇṇamuṇḍa Petavatthu, the twelfth.
English translation from the Pali (Siam Raṭṭha edition) — under review, not for citation.