Now the son was a very pious man, who never failed in his religious rites.  He worshipped the gods, gave memorial honours to his dead father, and welcomed to his house every Brahman who passed by.  One year, on the anniversary of his father’s death, he told his wife to prepare a milk-pudding in honour of the dead, and announced that he would invite Brahmans to partake of it.  The wife was as pious as her husband and never failed to obey his commands.  So she made a big milk-pudding, and she boiled vegetables and stewed fruits.  But just as she had finished and was about to invite her husband and his Brahman guests to begin their feast, the dog saw that a snake had entered the grain-jar, which had not been properly shut, and that it had left its poisonous trail all over the grain from which the milk-pudding had been prepared.  The dog at once realised that, if the Brahmans who had been invited to the memorial feast ate the poisoned grain, they would die, and that the sin of Brahman murder would be incurred by the host, her son.  So she suddenly rushed up and put her foot right into the middle of the milk-pudding.  The son’s wife was very angry.  She threw a red-hot coal at the dog with such skill that it dropped on to the middle of her back and burnt a big hole in it.  Then the son’s wife cooked a fresh milk-pudding and fed the Brahmans.  But she was so cross with the dog that she would not give her the smallest possible scrap.  So the poor dog remained hungry all day.  When night fell she went to the bullock who had been her husband and began to howl as loudly as she could.  The bullock asked her what the matter was.  She told him how she had seen that a snake had poisoned the grain, and how, to prevent the Brahmans dying and her son incurring the sin of their death, she had put her paw into the middle of the milk-pudding; how her daughter-in-law had been angry and had burnt a hole in her back with a live coal, and how her back hurt so that she did not know what to do.  The bullock answered, “You are suffering for the pollution with which you darkened our house in a former life, and, because I let you remain in the house and touched you, I too am suffering, and I have become a bullock.  Only to-day my son fastened me to his plough, tied up my mouth, and beat me, I too have, like you, had nothing to eat all day.  Thus all my son’s memorial services are useless.”  Now the son happened to be passing by the stable and heard this conversation.  He at once fetched the bullock some grass and the dog some food, and he brought them both water to drink; and then he went to bed very sad at heart.  Next morning he got up early and went into a dark forest until at last he came to the hermitage of a rishi.  He prostrated himself before the rishi, who asked him why he was so sad.  The Brahman’s son said, “I am sad because my father has been born again as a bullock and my mother as a dog.  Pray tell me how I can get their release,” The rishi said, “There is only