The Jatakas

by Sarah Shaw

  It is, however, as a repository of funny incident, drama and adventure that Jatakas show their peculiar charm and emotional appeal. Buddhism teaches a doctrine of anatta, or not-self, but the narrator’s aham, or ‘I’, of the stories is the Bodhisatta himself, the being defined by his commitment to develop enlightenment for the sake of others. His omnipresent search for the truth unifies what would otherwise be a very disparate collection of exempla, fables, anecdotes, romances, dramatic interchanges and heroic dramas. From the very short tales which begin the collection, often involving animals in the manner of Aesopic tales (37, 75, 128 and 316), to sustained narratives of immense complexity, which have affinities with other literary traditions such as epic, drama and even the novel (538, 539 and 540), we find the resourceful, alert and ever watchful presence of the Bodhisatta. 10 His actions are, sometimes, all too human—even when an animal—and he is even, very rarely, shown with some faults in the character he adopts for each tale (128 and 539). His behaviour is, however, largely exemplary and an embodiment of heroic elements suitable for one learning to teach a way to others. Some of the early ones, which show the Bodhisatta saving other animals through his courage or skill, are often funny and irreverent. By the time we get to the longer stories a more sustained exploration of the struggle for liberation, accompanied by extensive debate and the use of dramatic interchange to test the Bodhisatta’s motive, produces a genre that is a kind of Buddhist epic in its own right. The intricacies of plot, character, discourse and poetry that distinguish these long tales place some of them amongst the great works of world literature. While no internal chronological sequence is suggested, the character of the aspirant Buddha grows in stature and complexity as part of the preparations for the enlightenment. The stories that make up the last ten (mahanipata) of the 547, from which the last three in this collection show (538, 539 and 540), are epic journeys for him, as, tested through challenge, temptation and debate, he hones and purifies the attributes he needs to teach in his final life.

  But in the middle of this diversity, the themes of not-self (anatta) and impermanence (anicca) are unobtrusively knitted into the very structure of the collection as a whole. Though the Bodhisatta features in all the tales, either as watcher or protagonist, his identity, like that of the other characters, is constantly dissolved at the end of each lifetime with his death. He moves from one set of conditions to another, recognizable primarily by the wisdom and integrity engendered by the Bodhisatta vow. His role in a story is only fully understood at the end of the tale with the aham eva (indeed that was I), the acknowledgement on the part of the Buddha that completes all of the tales. Jatakas embody Buddhism applied through events: at the beginning of each story the Bodhisatta is again reborn, searching once more for the qualities that distinguish him from other beings.

  Structure of the stories

  So how do Jatakas work? Do they need to be read in order? We do not have specific information about their transmission but it is thought that they were in the first instance memorized for chanting, probably by the bhanaka tradition of monks who kept other early Buddhist texts alive before the advent of writing. 11 They would probably then have been related to an audience, comprising a mixture of laity and monks, at the kind of festivals where they are told now: full moon or uposatha days at temples, or danas, meals given to monks where food is offered and blessings given in return. The first story, as we see, suggests, in its recipients a certain lay orientation. With its extensive homage and introduction to the theme, it is clearly distinguished from the others, but it was probably the case that then, as now, any tale might be chosen for a particular event.

  Their use for separate occasions possibly shaped the structure of the tales, for they are constructed in a way that any could be told with little reference to others. With the exception of the first, each starts with an identifying tag that was probably intended as a mnemonic device for the monks chanting it. This gives the first couple of words of the first verse in the tale. This tag is given in the translation here just below the title. The tale proper starts with an incident in the present (paccuppannavatthu) called ‘the story from the present’. This always involves a collection of people, composed of monks, the laity, or both, who are sitting in discussion with the Buddha. Perhaps a monk asks a question, as in Jataka 108, or an odd event happens, such as the drought in Jataka 75. This prompts the telling of a past life, which reflects the situation in the present. This is the story proper, ‘the story from the past’ (atitavatthu), usually the bulk of the tale. The Bodhisatta, the remembered self of the Buddha, appears in each ‘story from the past’. He is usually, though not always, one of the central characters and the people he encounters are often his principal disciples such as Moggallana, Sariputta and Ananda, or Rahulamata, the Buddha’s wife or ‘mother of Rahula’, in their earlier lives. His evil cousin Devadatta also features, frequently providing a villainous counterpart to the Bodhisatta. Verses (gatha) feature as an accompaniment to the prose narrative in the past. These vary greatly in quality and function. Thought to be the oldest layer of the text, they are sometimes folk homilies, sometimes comments from the Buddha in the present and sometimes extended eulogies or dramatized interchanges that provide a lyrical or emotional counterpoint to the main action. The stories are grouped into twenty-two sections (nipatas) depending on the number of these verses in the story. Following the Rg Vedic pattern of ordering material, the stories with only one verse are in the first section, those with two in the second, then three and so on. There are some variations in this, but the pattern is followed until the final section (mahanipata), which contains the last ten stories, whose verses run into hundreds. The first three of these (538, 539 and 540) are translated here. Each tale finishes with the connection (samodhana), in which the Buddha, in the present, explains who was who in the earlier life and reveals his own identity.

  This overall structure provides a sense of continuity from one tale to the next. It also means that any story would have pleasingly familiar elements to someone hearing a particular one for the first time: the action always follows a basic shape, with the standard pattern for the introduction and conclusion enclosing whatever goes on in between. The way that each past life also pertains to one event in the present, however, gives us an unusual perspective when each story is read as a link in a larger process. The Buddha, his teaching and his followers always feature to a greater or lesser extent at the beginning and the end of each story.

  The Bodhisatta, the Buddha and the different kinds of enlightenment

  A fully enlightened one (sammasambuddha), able to show to others the way to find enlightenment for themselves, occurs only rarely. At the beginning of this selection of stories there is an extract from the introduction to the Jatakas (Jatakanidana). This describes Gotama’s predecessor, Dipankara, at whose feet the Buddha-to-be prostrates himself when he makes the Bodhisatta vow and undertakes to live through many lives developing the perfections. Jatakas occur in the time between this momentous vow and the ‘present’, when he has achieved his aim as our Buddha. There are no fully awakened Buddhas in the time in between, when the stories are set. Buddha Gotama is described in the story of the present, is said to tell and remember the past story, sometimes comments from the present through the verses and completes each Jataka in the first person, making the connections between the births in the present and those in the past. In this way, within the terms of the stories, he is literally omniscient: as their narrator he is the only character who is able to recollect all the incidents, in his own and in others’ lives. He does not appear as the Buddha in the story in the ‘past’, the ‘dark ages’ in which a teaching that leads to enlightenment is not available, but the verses attributed to him that are sometimes interspersed with others in the tales remind us of his presence. When his interjections occur in the story the narrative always points out that it is the Buddha speaking, not the Bodhisatta in the past, who has yet to find full enlightenment.

  A number of epithets are use
d exclusively for the Fully Awakened Buddha, who describes, interprets and explains the worlds his memory have conjured up for us: the Thus-gone (Tathagata), the Exalted One (Bhagava) or the Teacher (Sattha). His earlier ‘self’ has two titles: the Great Being (Mahasatta), a bit like the English expression ‘our hero’, or the Bodhisatta, a name which could be taken to mean ‘the one bound for enlightenment’ or ‘the one attached to enlightenment’. 12 The Buddha, whose name means ‘awake’, is enlightened. 13 He tells the incidents of the stories from memory; the Bodhisatta/Great Being, the self his memory recreates, acts within them. The Bodhisatta, is, like any other being in the tales, completely immersed in what is going on. He experiences desire, hatred and ignorance, but is usually heroic in some way: he finds himself in circumstances which others may find themselves in too. His struggles and aspirations, animated by his vow, are always ‘in the past’ (atite), an expression a little like our ‘once upon a time’ which begins the remembered stories. 14 The ‘past’ is ‘measureless’, involving oceanic stretches of time. It is also largely undifferentiated: while some stories are set in a specific period (Jataka 94) and the tradition has tended to assume that the last ten are sequentially near the end too, no obvious order or sequence is given. This interplay of times places Buddhahood within the stories always in the present, for the past stories enact in various metaphorical or parallel ways the dynamics of the ‘present’ stories. The Buddha, in the text as in his life, is the elucidator of meaning. His fully awakened mind is needed to remember, order, comment and provide connecting links that interpret the events of this unspecified time and relate it to a clearly located and recognizable ‘present’. Only he can recollect all the incidents and teach them to others, ‘as the moon is released from the clouds’ (Jataka 1). Buddhahood is not only the goal, therefore, but a prerequisite and a guiding principle for the text. We are reminded of this at the start and end of each story. It gives us the ‘happy ending’ to them all which readers or listeners are intended to assume, and which lends Jatakas their whole momentum and purpose. A Buddha, able to teach gods and men, is said to know all worlds (lokavidu). Many such worlds are described in the stories.

  The text describes two other forms of enlightenment. An option that the Bodhisatta could have taken at the time of his vow, but chooses not to, is that of arahatship: this awakening does not confer the great teaching ability of the Buddha. It is only possible in or after the time of the Buddha, so arahats do not feature in the tales set in the past. Like all forms of enlightenment, this has four stages. At the first, stream-entry, the practitioner abandons doubt and grosser defilements. He or she will experience at most seven more lifetimes, none of which will be in a ‘bad destiny’, a lower rebirth such as an animal or a ghost. The second stage is once-return. At this moment, more subtle defilements are abandoned and the practitioner is certain to attain enlightenment and nibbana after, at most, one more life. The third stage is never-return, which guarantees that the practitioner will become enlightened in that lifetime and never again take another rebirth of any kind. The fourth stage is arahatship, at which all defilements are removed. The enlightened being passes at death to nibbana, the end of all suffering. When this occurs in the stories from the present, it is called parinibbana, or complete nibbana, as in the story from the present in Jataka 95. In the ‘story from the present’ it is quite usual in Jatakas for one or more of the listeners to the ‘story from the past’ to attain one of these stages of the path. This happens after hearing the story from the past and then the exposition of the four noble truths at the end. The four noble truths, of dukkha, suffering (literally: dis-ease) the craving that gives rise to this (tanha), the peace and freedom of the ceasing of craving (nibbana) and the path leading to that (magga) are the formulation of the Buddha’s teaching that is given in his first sermon, in which he teaches the middle way to the group of ascetics who had been his companions in the severe austerities that preceded the enlightenment. 15 By showing characters in the present obtaining insight on the basis of talks given after the stories, the point is continually reiterated that arahatship and the stages leading to it are possible in the ‘present’, the time of the Buddha, when they were not possible in ‘the past’, the time when there had been no fully awakened mind to show the way. People do not become arahats during Jataka tales, nor, the structure of each tale implies, by listening to them either. This only happens when the Buddha in the final section delivers teaching on the four noble truths and makes his explanatory links. During the aeons of the stories in the past the characters in the tales—and perhaps the listeners too—have to follow the resources that are available to them, or the kind of teachings open to their species and station. ‘The story in the past’ seems almost like a time of dreams, a preliminary journey to prepare the mind for the end of the tale. Arahatship, or awakening, and the stages leading to it, happen in the ‘present’, when the Buddha explains who was who, and can deliver the teaching that elucidates the text.

  Another form of awakening is that found by the paccekabuddhas, now sometimes called silent Buddhas. These figures, who feature for the most part in later Jatakas in the collection, find the path to enlightenment for themselves, without the need for the teaching of a fully awakened Buddha. They can arise at any time. Although they do sometimes teach in Jatakas they do not provide for others the full path to enlightenment. They possibly represent some sort of attempt to integrate and validate other meditative paths within the Buddhist tradition. At any rate, from the evidence of the tales, the excellence of paccekabuddhas derives from their embodiment, through posture, manner and bearing, of what it is to live in the world free from defilement of any kind, when circumstances prevent other forms of spiritual teaching and practice. 16 Within the context of the Jatakas, they act as representatives of the spiritual path at times when the possibility of hearing the teaching of a Buddha is not there. A bit like the rising and the setting of the sun, with which they are associated in the story of Mahajanaka (539), they follow tracks that are out of the reach of others, but are silent and even mysterious constants. The paccekabuddha is a reassuring presence who is honoured and revered whenever any character is lucky enough to encounter one.

  The perfections (paramis) in the stories

  This collection starts with the vow that sets in motion the Bodhisatta path and defines the character of the Bodhisatta, the Buddha-to-be. This moment, the seed of all the stories, introduces the idea of the perfections, the openings on to the ‘great highway’ that leads to complete awakening. Making his resolve, the Bodhisatta says, ‘So few are all the things in this world that bring awakening to maturation, that bring about Buddhahood and that are to be fulfilled by Bodhisattas. Beyond these ten perfections there are no others. These ten perfections do not exist in the sky above; they do not exist in the earth below, or in any of the directions that start with the East. They are established right in the depths of my heart.’ 17 The ten perfections are a post-canonical list describing attributes that should be cultivated by the being who wishes to be a Buddha and teach others. The list is also constantly taught at a popular level to this day. The first perfection, generosity (dana), is the practice of giving through acts of generosity, particularly to holy men. The second is moral restraint or virtue (sila). The third is renunciation (nekkhamma), usually the giving up of the lay life, but also, in its metaphoric sense, the giving up of sensory ties. The fourth is wisdom (panna), which is only fully developed at enlightenment. The fifth is effort (viriya), which encompasses the four right efforts of ridding the mind of unskilful states, ensuring they do not arise again, arousing skilful states and ensuring that they are sustained. It is also one of the five faculties necessary for the attainment of meditation (jhana). The sixth is forbearance or patience (khanti). The seventh is truthfulness (sacca), said to be one of the defining features of a Bodhisatta. The eighth is resolve (adhitthana), the determination made when any vow is undertaken, such as a decision to observe a certain amount of moral precepts for a sp
ecified time, or, indeed, to become a Bodhisatta. The ninth is loving kindness (metta), an attitude of mind which can become the foundation for all dealings with others. This is developed further in meditative practice, when it is suffused to all sentient beings. The tenth is equanimity (upekkha), the imperturbability of mind that transcends painful and non-painful feeling. This may also be developed further in meditation and becomes, in the end, one of the factors that lead to enlightenment (bojjhanga). A separate image is used to describe each one of the perfections. He should practise generosity as a jar that is overturned spills and is unstinting with water; he should guard his virtue as a yak her tail. He should practise renunciation as a man serving a long sentence in prison wishes to leave it; he should practise wisdom, asking questions everywhere, as a monk begging for food goes to everyone to find it. He should practise effort as a lion displays unabated vigour; he should practise forbearance or patience as the earth receives everything which is thrown upon it. He should practise truthfulness as the healing star does not deviate from her course; he should practise resolve as a mountain remains firm. He should practise loving kindness as water cools both the bad and the good, and he should cultivate equanimity as the earth accepts whatever pure or impure matter is thrown upon it. 18 It is these qualities which are explored and found in the time of the stories.