Nalinika’s Story of The Seduction of an Innocent

Nalinika?s Story. Nalinika?s Story is a pre-canonical story of the Buddha?s former life. The story is an interesting, but highly improbable, fable: a sage lives alone in the Himalayas, there is semen in the urine he passes, and a deer who happens to eat the grass in that place gets pregnant from it. A human boy is later born to the deer and he is brought up in complete seclusion from mankind, and most importantly, from womankind. The boy?s ascetic power becomes so great that Sakka in his heaven is worried by it and causes a drought to occur in the country and blames it on the boy. He then convinces the King to send his daughter to seduce him and to break his power. The King and his daughter accept Sakka?s reasoning and in good faith ? and for the benefit of the country ? agree to the plot.