Once an ascetic found a baby elephant and reared it as his own. The elephant started growing up over the years. The other ascetics were scared of keeping a wild elephant in their premises. The ascetic’s teacher advised him, “As long as the elephant was a baby, it was okay to keep it in the hermitage. But now that it has grown up, it is dangerous to keep the elephant here. It may lose its temper and become wild at any moment.” The ascetic did not pay heed to his teacher’s advice. He thought, ‘I have reared the elephant as my own baby. It will never harm me.’ Now, one day, all the ascetics left the hermitage to perform a ceremony except the one who raised the elephant. Suddenly, the elephant lost its temper and started trampling everything that got in its way. The elephant did not spare its master as well. When the teacher returned, he said, “If only he would have listened to me.”
The Wild Elephant
