Despite being forbidden by the lion, the jackal issued forth from the cave and three times cried the jackal’s cry “bukka! bukka! bukka!” Looking about, he saw a black elephant in the plain below and thinking, “I shall leap on his head!” he jumped down from the cliff, but turning around in the air he landed at the elephant’s feet. The elephant lifted up his forefoot and brought it down upon the jackal’s head, smashing it to bits. The elephant went off trumpeting as the jackal lay on the ground groaning. The lion, seeing this, said, “Through pride was this jackal destroyed.” (Jāt 335)
The greedy habits of jackals often get them in trouble, and on rare occasions, they can even learn a valuable lesson and change for the better:
At one time the Bodhisatta came to birth as a jackal. Once, when searching for food he came across the carcass of an elephant. “What a great pile of food I have found!” He bit into the trunk, but it was like biting the handle of a plough. “There is nothing to eat here!” So he tried biting into the tusk but that was as hard as a stone pillar. He bit the ear next, but that was like the hard edge of a basket. Gnawing on the elephant’s stomach was like trying to bite his way into a stone granary. Its feet were like mortars, its tail like the pestle.
Everywhere he tried to bite into the elephant, he found nothing to eat until he found the anus, which was like biting into soft pastry. “Now I have found soft food in this carcass!” So beginning there, he ate his way into the elephant’s belly. He devoured the kidneys, and growing thirsty, he drank the blood and when he became tired he stretched out in the elephant’s stomach and fell asleep. “Here in this elephant carcass, I have abundant food and drink, and a pleasant home to rest in. Why should I go anywhere else?”
But by and by the heat of the sun and the wind dried out the elephant’s carcass and as the corpse withered, the jackal’s doorway closed up leaving the inside in darkness. For the jackal, it became like a birth in the lokantara niraya.335 The elephant’s flesh withered and dried up, and all the blood was gone. The jackal grew frightened and dashed to and fro inside the elephant’s belly like a ball of flour in a cooking pot, but he was unable to escape.
After the jackal had endured this torment for a few days, it began to rain. The carcass became moistened and swelled up back to its original size, and the anus opened up enough for a little light to shine through, looking like a star in the sky. “My life is saved!” The jackal backed up into the elephant’s head then took a running leap through the anus as quick as he could. The hole was so tight it tore all the hair off the jackal’s hide. At first, when he got out, he was so frightened that he just kept running. But when he stopped at last and saw the state of his hairless body, he exclaimed “This suffering of mine has no cause other than my own greed. From this day forward, I shall never be greedy again, nor shall I ever go inside an elephant carcass!”336
Crows (kāka) feature in twenty-two Jātakas. We have seen that crows are called “the lowest of the birds,” being in many respects the avian equivalent of the jackals. Like the jackals, they are portrayed as tricky and thieving. There are several stories of crows attempting to steal food from human kitchens and coming to a bad end because of it.337 The following story illustrates the trickiness of crows:
Certain merchants of Kāsi went to sea taking along a land-finding crow.338 In the midst of the ocean, the ship was wrecked and the crow found his way to an island on which there dwelt a large flock of birds. The crow thought, “Here there is a large flock of birds. It would be excellent to eat their eggs and their young. I shall use trickery on them.”
So he landed in the midst of them and stood on one foot with his mouth wide-open. “Who are you?” the birds asked, and the crow replied “I am Dhammiko” (i.e. “the righteous one”) “Why do you stand on one foot?” “If I put my other foot down, the earth could not bear my weight.” “Why do you stand with your mouth open?” “I eat no other food, but only the wind.” The crow then spoke a stanza in praise of living righteously. The island birds decided the crow must be a holy bird (bhaddako pakkhī) “a twice-born one who stands on one foot speaking Dhamma.”339
The birds said to the crow, “Sir, as you eat nothing but wind, would you look after our eggs and our young while we go for food?” The crow agreed, and as soon as the birds were gone the villain (pāpo) ate their eggs and their young ones until his belly was full. When the birds returned they found the crow standing on one foot with his mouth open as before. Seeing the loss of their eggs and their young, they raised a disturbance, but did not suspect the crow because they thought him a righteous bird who lived on air.
However, the king of the birds was the Bodhisatta and he reasoned that before this crow came they had not lost any eggs or young ones. So the next time the birds went feeding, he stayed behind and hid himself to watch the crow. The crow ate the eggs and the young birds as before. So when the birds came back, the bird-king called a meeting and told them what had happened and the entire flock fell upon the crow and striking him with beak and claw and wing they beat him to death.340
Sometimes the crows, even in the midst of their thievery, display something of a nobler character:
Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was king of Bārāṇasi, the Bodhisatta was born as a king of the crows named Supatta (“Good Wing”). He had a queen named Suphassā (“Good Touch”) and a general named Sumukha (“Good Beak”, this was Sāriputta). He had eighty thousand followers and they all lived near to Bārāṇasi.
Queen Suphassā came to have a craving for human food from the royal kitchens and told her husband the king, “I have a desire to eat the food of the King of Bārāṇasi, my lord,341 and if I don’t get what I want, I shall surely die.” King Supatta sat down to think and his general Sumukha approached him, “What troubles you, great king?” The king of the crows told him what the Queen wanted and Sumukha replied, “Do not think about it, great king. You stay here today, and I shall fetch the food.”
So Sumukha gathered the crows together and they flew to Bārāṇasi. He posted companies here and there near the kitchen to keep watch and he himself, together with eight crow-warriors took up a position on the kitchen roof. He spoke to his soldiers, “When the king’s servant comes out with the dishes of food, I will make him drop them. When he drops the dishes, my life is finished. Four of you gather up as much rice as you can, and four of you get the fish and meat. Take the food to Supatta and his wife. If he asks you where his general is, say that I am following shortly.”
When the king’s servant emerged from the kitchen bearing a platter of food, Sumukha flew down and landed on his chest, striking him with his talons. With his beak he struck at the man’s nose while beating his face with his two wings. The king was watching from an upper storey of the palace and he cried out from a window, “Hey, you there, drop the food and catch that crow!” The man seized Sumukha to bring him before the king, and the other crows descended to pick up the food.
Sumukha the crow general was brought before the king of Bārāṇasi who spoke to him thus, “Crow, have you no shame? You have broken the nose of my serving man and spilt my food. Have you no regard for your own life, why do you do such things?” The crow answered, “Great King, our king lives near here. His queen developed a craving for human food and when I learned of this, I sacrificed my life to satisfy it. That is why I have done these deeds.”
The king was pleased with the crow’s character. “Although we give our human subjects great honours, we cannot win this kind of friendship. Even though we might give them a whole village, still they will not sacrifice their lives for us, as this crow does for his king.” The king afterward showed great honour to the crows, sending them food of both kinds (i.e. rice and meat) and Supatta the king of crows taught Dhamma to the human king of Bārāṇasi and established him in the five precepts. It is said that the teachings of Supatta the crow lasted for seven hundred years. (Jāt 292)
A crow story of particular interest is the Bāveru Jātaka in which Nigaṇṭha Nāṭaputta appears
as the crow. Nigaṇṭha Nāṭaputta was a rival teacher and an older contemporary of the Buddha’s. He has been identified with the founder of the Jains, now more commonly known as Māhāvīra. There are several references to him in the suttas, generally unflattering.342
At one time the Bodhisatta came to birth as a peacock and Nigaṇṭha Nāṭaputta as a crow. Some merchants took the crow along as a land-finding crow and sailed across the sea to the land of Bāveru. Until that time, the inhabitants of Bāveru had not seen a bird of any kind. On seeing the crow, they exclaimed, “Look at the beautiful colour of this bird, at the perfection of its throat its beak and its eyes like jewels!” They asked the merchants to give them the crow and the latter pretended to be reluctant to part with it, bargaining the price up to one hundred kahāpaṇas (a unit of money). “It is very useful to us, but as we wish to be your friends, we will sell it to you.” The Bāveru people put the crow in a golden cage and fed it with various kinds of meat and fruits, taking very good care of it. So in a land where there were no other birds, a crow endowed with the ten bad qualities (asaddhammā) obtained the highest gain and glory.
After some time the merchants returned to Bāveru. They brought along a peacock they had caught and had trained to sing at the snap of a finger and to dance at a clap of the hands. The Bāveru people were amazed, “This king of birds is of great beauty and very learned. You must give him to us!” This time the price was settled at one thousand kahāpanas. They kept the peacock in a cage made of the seven precious things and fed him with meat and fruit as well as syrup made from honey and other sweet things. While the highest gains came to the peacock, the honour paid to the crow diminished, and no one wanted to look at it. When the crow could not get any more food at all, it uttered a cry, “Kāka”, and flew away to live on a dung-heap. (Jāt 339)
Bāveru is identified by the DPPN with Babylon, which would have been sufficiently remote from the Ganges Valley so as to seem exotic enough not to have any birds. The ten asaddhammā with which the crow was said to be endowed are not specified. There is a list of seven asaddhammā at Dīgha Nikāya 33: these are moral qualities beginning with lack of shame but it seems that in the present context they are probably physical qualities like an unpleasant colour, unpleasant voice etc. In caste conscious India a dark complexion was always considered undesirable. For example, in Jātaka 451 a crow seeks to obtain the golden colour of a goose and asks the latter about his diet only to be told that the crow’s ugliness is not the result of his food but of his kamma.
The Lion, (sīha), is considered the king of the beasts.343 Lions feature in twenty Jātaka stories. The Bodhisatta was born as a lion ten times, Sāriputta three times, Rāhula (Siddhattha’s son) twice, Rāhulamātā (Siddhattha’s wife) once as was Devadatta. Generally the lion displays a nobility of nature, and this is several times contrasted to the baseness of jackals.344 The lion’s roar is singled out as a special attribute, which fills all other animals with fear.345
The lion’s noble nature can sometimes seem like caste prejudice with its attendant emphasis on personal purity:
At one time the Bodhisatta came to birth as a lion. One day, after killing some animal and eating his fill, the lion went down to the lake to take a drink. Just then a fat boar also came down for a drink. The lion saw him and thought, “Some other day I shall eat this one. But now, if he sees me here he won’t come back again.” So he crept away to the side away from the lake. The boar, seeing this, thought, “It is because he is afraid of me that this lion sneaks away. It is fitting that I challenge him!” Raising his head, the boar challenged the lion to battle:
“I am a four-footed one, so are you! Come, my dear,346 turn around, don’t run away from fright!”
The lion replied, “Dear boar, today there shall be no battle between you and I. But come here in seven days and then we shall fight.” The boar went to his kin-folk, and bristling up boasted, “I shall do battle with a lion!” But his relatives were terrified, “Now you shall bring us all to destruction! Not knowing your own strength, you would fight a lion! When the lion comes, he will kill us all! You should not act so savagely!”
The boar asked them what he should do. They advised him to roll in a pile of dung each day for seven days and on the day of the battle to stand upwind of the lion. The lion being an animal of a cleanly nature, will smell his body and not wanting to go near him, concede him the victory. This the boar did, and when the lion smelled the boar covered in filth he said, “My dear boar, this is a pretty trick you have thought of. If you were not covered with filth, I would take your life. Now I don’t want to bite your body, or even touch it with my foot. I give you the victory.”
The boar returned to his kin and boasted “I have beaten the lion! Victory is mine!” But the boars were afraid that the lion would return and kill them all so they left that place never to return. (Jāt 153)
At other times the lion can demonstrate a constructive leadership role among the animals:
Once upon a time a hare was resting underneath a palm-tree and the thought occurred to him, “If the earth were to break up, where could I go?” Just then, a ripe fruit fell out of the tree onto a dry palm leaf, making a loud noise. The hare thought, “The earth is breaking up!” and without looking back he sprang up and began running in fear for his life. Another hare saw him running along and asked what was the matter. Without looking back he answered, “The earth is breaking up!” So the other hare began running along behind him. One after another more hares joined the flight until a thousand hares were running along together.
A deer saw them running and joined in, then a boar, an elk, a buffalo, a rhinoceros, a tiger, a lion and an elephant all joined in the stampede. Each one asked “what is happening?” and on being told that the earth was breaking up, became afraid and began to run along. So by degrees the host of animals came to cover an entire yojana.
At that time the Bodhisatta had come to birth as a lion. When he saw the great host of animals running by he too asked what was happening and was told that the earth was breaking up. But the Bodhisatta thought, “The earth is in no way breaking up. It must have been some loud sound that one of them heard. If I don’t make an effort, they will all come to destruction. I must save their lives!”
With the speed of a lion347 he ran ahead of the animals to the foot of a mountain and standing there gave three loud roars. In fear of the lion, all the animals stopped and stood huddled together. The lion questioned them:
“Why are you running?”
“The earth is breaking up.”
“Who saw it?”
“The elephants know all about it!”
But when he asked the elephants, they said they knew nothing about it, but that the lions knew. The lions said the tigers knew, the tigers said the rhinos knew, they said the oxen knew, the oxen said the buffaloes knew, they said to ask the elk, the elk said to ask the boars, the boars said it was the deer who knew. The deer said, “We don’t know, it is the hares who know all about it.” When the Bodhisatta asked the hares, they said, “This one told us.”
So the Bodhisatta turned to the hare and asked,
“Did you see the earth breaking up?”
“Yes, sir, I saw it.”
“Where were you staying when you saw it?”
“Underneath a palm tree near the ocean. I was just thinking about the earth breaking up when I heard a terrible noise and started to run away.”
The Bodhisatta thought that no doubt a ripe fruit had fallen onto a dried palm leaf, and that he ought to go there and find out all about it. So he turned to the host of animals and told them, “I am going with this hare to the place where he says the earth is breaking up. I shall find out all about it and return here. All of you just remain in this place until I return.” So taking the hare on his back the lion ran to the shore of the ocean and seeing the ripe fruit lying on a palm leaf he knew that in fact the earth was not breaking up.
The lion returned to the herd of animals and told them all a
bout it. “So do not be afraid.” The animals were calmed and they dispersed from that place. If the Bodhisatta had not taken action, the whole host of them would have run all the way into the ocean and perished. (Jāt 322)
The introduction to this Jātaka says that the story is told to explain the origin of a proverbial saying. When something which at first seems important turns out to be meaningless, it is said to be “like the noise the hare heard.”348
Elephants (hatthī) feature in eighteen Jātaka stories. The Bodhisatta came to birth as an elephant in seven of them; other persons from the Buddha’s lifetime who had previously been elephants in Jātaka stories include Devadatta, Mahāmāyā (the Bodhisatta’s mother), Moggallāna and Nanda. Elephants display a complex range of character traits in the Jātakas. Sometimes they are violent and unpredictable: “elephants kill even those who foster them,” (Jāt 161) but more often they are brave and noble.
Long ago, an elephant walking through the forest pierced his foot with a thorn from an acacia branch. The wound swelled up with pus and became very painful. In his suffering he heard the sounds of wood being pounded and he thought, “There must be some carpenters working there. Perhaps they will help me.”
The elephant entered a clearing and there found a camp of carpenters from the town cutting wood. He lay down and showed them his swollen foot. The men cut around the thorn with an awl and drew it out with a cord. They washed the wound with hot water and applied medicine to it, and soon it was healed completely.
The elephant thought, “These carpenters have saved my life. It is proper that I do them service.” So from that day hence he lived with the carpenters and carried wood for them, fetched their tools and helped by holding one end of the measuring string. At meal-time each carpenter gave him one portion of food, so the elephant had five hundred portions in all.
Now, this elephant had a son, a fine young elephant white all over. When he grew old he went into the forest and fetched this young one and brought him to the carpenters. “Now I am old, so in payment for your nursing me to health, I give you this young one to serve you in my stead.” And he went away back to his forest haunts.
The Buddhist Cosmos Page 23