by Sarah Shaw
The Teacher introduced this account to reveal the noble truths and explained the connection with the birth: at this explanation of the truth the householder, who was generous with everything to do with the requisites, obtained the fruits of stream-entry. ‘At that time Ananda was the otter, Moggallana the jackal, Sariputta the monkey and I was the hare.’
Notes
1 The Story of Gotama Buddha, p. 25 (J I 20).
2 Cone and Gombrich, Perfect Generosity, pp. 75ff., section 568ff.
3 H.C.P. Bell, Archaeological Survey of Ceylon, Annual Report, 1909.
4 Oddly enough, Thompson’s Motif Index makes no mention of this story, which seems to travel with Buddhism. For comment, see Winternitz, History of Indian Literature, II, p. 145, n.3. See also L. Alsdorf, Sasa-Jataka und Sasa-Avadana, wiener Zeitschrift fur die Kunde Sud-und Ostasiens, Wien, 1961; Francis and Thomas, Jataka Tales, p. 229; and, for extensive overview on literature on the subject, L. Grey, A Concordance of Buddhist Birth Stories, Oxford: PTS, 2000, pp. 365–70 (dittography in this section). For Jatakamala story, see Khoroche, Once the Buddha was a Monkey, pp. 37–45 (story 2).
5 Sakka is king of the gods of the heaven of the Thirty-Three Gods, where one can be reborn through acts of generosity, faith or by keeping the precepts. In the Jatakas an undertaking or an act of great virtue—such as the gift of King Vessantara of his wife and children—causes Sakka’s seat to become hot, and King Sakka goes to protect the one who has enacted great virtue from any disastrous result of such a courageous volition.
6 Himagabbham: the clouds, as in the story from the present in Jataka 1.
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The story of Nandiya the deer
Nandiya Jataka (385)
Vol. III, 270–4
When the Bodhisatta makes his vow to become a Buddha he is told by the last Buddha, Dipankara, ‘Just as water suffuses with coolness good and bad people alike, and washes away dust and dirt, so you too, cultivate loving kindness for friend and enemy alike.’ 1 Although this is not one of the stories attributed by the Cariyapitaka to the ninth perfection, of loving kindness (metta), following I.B. Horner’s example I have chosen it for its simplicity in expressing the great potency which this quality is said to possess. 2 Loving kindness has a worldly and a meditative application. In the worldly sense, it can be present at any moment or activity in daily life and ensures that wisdom is not harsh or cruel. 3 This worldly application is how it commonly appears in Jataka stories where the Bodhisatta acts to protect or save the life of other beings. In the meditative sense it is regarded as a divine abiding (brahmavihara): if loving kindness is extended to all beings, in all directions, it becomes immeasurable and may be developed into an object of concentration that can then be used as a means of attaining the first four meditations (jhanas), that bring rebirth in a Brahma heaven. The four divine abidings are frequently taken as meditation subjects in Jataka stories (9, 106).
Throughout Buddhist countries legends are constantly related of abbots or meditative monks who appease raging tigers, quell other wild animals and even keep insects at bay through the practice of loving kindness. The famous twentieth-century forest meditation teacher Maha Boowa, for instance, is said to have had a miraculous ability to empty dangerous places of tigers, and on one occasion, it is reported, calmed and formed a distant friendship with one. 4 The practice of loving kindness is probably the most commonly taught meditation practice in Sri Lanka and it is taught to children in schools. The Metta Sutta, considered amongst the most auspicious texts of the Buddhist tradition, says that one wishing for, or even who has obtained, ‘that tranquil condition’, nibbana, should cultivate loving kindness to all beings, in all directions, as a mother guards the life of her only child. 5 This text is thought to dispel all kinds of bad luck or unhappiness and is considered to have almost magical properties in Theravada Buddhist countries, being chanted at major events such as a wedding, the birth of a child, starting a new building or moving house. It is striking that Jatakas in which the Bodhisatta is reborn as a deer usually involve him practising and acting upon loving kindness. Perhaps the appealing manner and soft eyes of the species make this the most obvious association. 6In Indian stories generally deer are noted for their gentleness and are associated with the peace of forest hermitages, though often, as in this story, threatened by a hunter. 7
Story from the present
‘If, Brahmin, you are going to the Anjana Forest‘
While staying in the Jetavana Grove the Teacher told this story about a monk who cared for his mother. The Teacher asked him, ‘Is it true what they say about you caring for householders?’ ‘It is, sir.’ ‘Who are they?’ ‘My mother and father, sir,’ he said. ‘Well done! It is very good that you protect your family. In times long past you also protected your family. Even though they had taken an animal rebirth, the wise of old also protected the life of their mother and father.’ Saying this he narrated this story about the past.
Story from the past
Once upon a time when the king of Kosala was ruling over the kingdom of Kosala in Saketa the Bodhisatta took rebirth as a deer. When he grew up, the deer, called Nandiya, or Delight, was endowed with virtuous conduct and looked after his mother and father. At that time the kingdom of Kosala was rich in deer and the king used to go every day with a large retinue to hunt for them, going over men’s ploughed fields and agricultural land. The men met together for discussion: ‘Worthy friends, this king of ours destroys our crops and our livelihood will be destroyed. Why don’t we encircle the Anjana Forest park, fix a gate to it, dig out a lotus pond and grow grasses. Then we’ll enter the wilderness with sticks and clubs in our hands and beat the thickets. We’ll drive the deer and surround them so that they go into the park and cover the gate as if they were cattle in a cow pen. After that we’ll see that the king is informed and we may go about our business. This is our plan.’ And as they were all in agreement, they prepared the park, entered the wilderness and encircled a space that measured a yojana. [271]
At that moment Nandiya had taken his mother and father into one of the small thickets and was lying down on the ground. Men carrying a variety of planks and weapons in their hands pressed down upon them and, shoulder to shoulder, surrounded the thicket. Some entered the thicket looking out for deer. Nandiya saw them and thought, ‘Today I’ll give up my life; it is necessary to offer it for the sake of my mother and father.’ With this thought he roused his parents and paid homage to them: ‘Dear ones, when these men come into the thicket they’ll see three of us, but with this trick you should survive. It is better that you have life and that I make a gift of my life to you. I’ll stay in the thicket while men surround it and then, as soon as they beat it, I’ll leave. And then they will think that there must have been only one deer in this clump of trees. Be careful!’ And, asking his mother and father for forgiveness, he stood ready to go. He stayed in the thicket and as soon as the men surrounding it and shouting started to beat it, he left. Thinking that there must have been only one deer in the thicket they did not go any further in. Nandiya went and entered into the midst of the herd. The men surrounded all the deer and made them go into the garden then closed the gate. They informed the king and then returned to their own homes. From that time the king went himself, shot and killed one deer with an arrow and went taking it with him, or he sent orders and had it brought. The deer drew lots. The chosen deer stood to one side. Releasing the arrows, the king’s men killed him. Nandiya drank water in the lotus pond and ate the grasses, but still the lot did not fall to him.
Now, after many days his mother and father longed to see him and thought, ‘Our son Nandiya, the king of the deer, is as strong as an elephant and in good health. If he is alive he will certainly leap over the fence and come and see us. [272] We’ll send him a message.’ Standing beside the road they saw a brahmin and said, ‘Sir, where are you going?’ They asked in human speech. 8 ‘Saketa,’ he replied. They spoke the first verse, sending a message to their son.
&nb
sp; 1.‘If, Brahmin, you are going to the Anjana Forest in Saketa, please would you say to our own dear son, Nandiya by name, “Your mother and father are old, and they wish to see you”.’
‘Certainly’, he agreed. He went to Saketa and on the next day entered the garden. ‘Which is the deer called Nandiya?’ he asked. The deer went up to him and stood there. ‘I am’, he said. The brahmin related the matter to him. Nandiya heard him and said, ‘I could go, Brahmin, but even if I could leap over the fence I would not leave, for my food is the fodder and water I have been given from the king. This places me in his debt; in addition, I have dwelt amongst these deer for a long time. So it is not fitting to leave without bringing him good fortune, and them too, or without showing my strength. When my turn comes I’ll ensure their safety and will come happily.’ And in explanation he spoke two verses:
2. ‘The food and drink consumed by me is the gift of the king; This royal food [would be] wrongly eaten, 9 Brahmin, so I will not act.
3. I will expose my side to the king, with a sharp weapon in his hand.
Then I may see my mother, happy and set free.’
[273] When he heard this, the brahmin left. Some time later it was the day for Nandiya’s turn and the king came into the grove with a large retinue. The Great Being stood to one side. The king said that he would kill the deer and notched a sharp-edged arrow. While the other animals fled in fear at the risk of death the Great Being did not run in this way. Without fear, putting loving kindness before everything else, he exposed the ribs of his great side and stood motionless. Through the power of this loving kindness the king could not release the arrow. The Great Being said, ‘Why do you not release the arrow, great king? Release it!’ ‘I cannot, king of the deer,’ he replied. ‘Through this know the excellence of excellent creatures, great king.’ Then the king, delighted with the Bodhisatta, threw down the bow and said, ‘Even this insentient wooden arrow recognizes excellence: how can I, a conscious man, not recognize it! Forgive me, I grant you freedom from harm.’ ‘Great king, you grant me freedom from harm but what will this herd of deer in the grove do?’ ‘I grant it to them too,’ he replied. In this way the Great Being, according to the way told in the Nigrodha Jataka, 10 ensured that safety was granted to all the deer in the forest, to the birds that fly in the sky and to the fishes that move in the water. He established the king in the five precepts: ‘Great king, now that you have abandoned following evil courses of action you should rule your own kingdom according to the ten ways of the king, with evenness, without anger and in accordance with dhamma.’
4. ‘“Generosity, virtue, giving up, uprightness, mildness, asceticism, lack of anger, lack of cruelty, forbearance and lack of enmity":
5. I see these good things established in the self, and joy and happiness arise in me, in no small degree.’
The Bodhisatta spoke in this way, teaching the ways of a king in verse form, and after he had stayed a few days near the king he had a golden drum beaten, announcing the gift of freedom from harm for all beings. ‘Be vigilant, great king,’ he said and left to see his mother and father.
6. ‘In times past I was the king of the deer in the house of Kosala. My name was Delight, and so was my four-footed nature.
7. Kosala came: he had made his bow ready and notched an arrow to kill me in the Anjana Forest, his royal gift.
8. I exposed my side to the king, sharp weapon in his hand, And then I, happy and set free, went to see my mother.’ These verses were spoken by the Fully Awakened Buddha.
The Teacher gave this talk, explained the truths and made the connections with the birth. (At the conclusion of the truths the monk who had cared for his parents was established in stream-entry.) ‘At that time members of the royal family were the mother and the father, Sariputta was the brahmin, Ananda the king and it was I who was the king of the deer.’
Notes
1 ‘The Far Past’ (J I 24).
2 I.B. Horner, Ten Jataka Stories, 1974, pp. 82–9.
3 Loving kindness accompanies the first skilful consciousness (kusala citta) accompanied by knowledge (Dhammasangani 36). A negative in ancient Indian languages has a much more active force than in English: so the absence of hatred (adosa) is explained by the commentary as the positive quality of loving kindness (Atthasalini 129, Pe Maung Tin trans., 2 vols, The Expositor, I, PTS, 1920, pp. 169–71).
4 This is told in S. Buddhasukh trans., The Venerable Phra Acharn Mun Bhuridatta Thera, Meditation Master (Bangkok: Mahamakut Rajavidyalaya Press, 1976), p. 95 and pp. 253–9.
5 Sn 143–52.
6 See Jatakas 12, 482 and 483. In the Sama Jataka (540) the Bodhisatta is not a deer, but is always accompanied by them. Speaking of the Nigrodha Jataka (12), Winternitz notes the similarity of the theme of a deer swaying a king through loving kindness with the Christian legend of St Placidus, converted to Christianity by a deer (Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature, p. 145).
7 See Patrick Olivelle, Pancatantra, p. xxiii and, for instance, the opening lines of Act I in Kalidasa’s The Recognition of Sakuntala (W.J. Johnson trans., Oxford: OUP, 2001, pp. 7–9).
8 Animals that converse with humans in their own speech are ancient features of Indian literature, of which there are many examples in the Vedas. See also Jataka 476.
9 I have taken the word avabhuttam, used by one of the Burmese manuscripts (Bd), on the suggestions of DP I 249 and CPD I 457. It means ‘food eaten unlawfully’.
10 Jataka 12: a story where the Bodhisatta as a deer protects a pregnant doe and receives a similar assurance from a king.
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The story of the barleymeal sack
Satthubhasta Jataka (402)
Vol. III, 341–51
The Ummagga Jataka (546), mentioned in the story from the present here, describes the fully awakened Buddha as possessing ‘great wisdom (mahapanno), wide wisdom, smiling wisdom, swift wisdom, acute wisdom’. 1 In his last life the aspect of wisdom, essential not only as a perfection but for the attainment of enlightenment, also enables him to refute all kinds of different doctrines and to teach an enormous diversity of beings. As we see in the stories in this collection, even before the enlightenment the Bodhisatta is able to teach yakkhas (55), animals (316) and kings (476). The methods he employs vary and depend upon his use of skill in means (upaya kusala), but often, as is the case here, involve finding the answer to odd little puzzles. In this it follows the pattern of the Ummagga Jataka, which illustrates the perfection of wisdom through the Bodhisatta’s ability as a minister to solve endless riddles and practical difficulties, both domestic and state, for the king and his subjects. In the story here, the Bodhisatta, also a king’s minister, works out the answer to a riddle that is causing great unhappiness for a wandering brahmin. Why is it that his wife will be killed if he goes home on that day and he will be killed if he goes home the next? In a manner reminiscent of modern detective fiction, the Bodhisatta works out the answer, using a variety of methods that include imaginative reconstruction, the logical listing of possibilities and direct questioning. In the end he teases out the correct solution: a snake in the brahmin’s bag. But the Bodhisatta does not stop there. The brahmin, like other men of his caste in Indian folk tales, is something of a comic butt. He has been cuckolded by an unfaithful, younger wife, who has been the primary, if not immediate, cause of his problems. The Bodhisatta finds a way of bringing to light this other, hidden danger and takes steps to ensure that it does not threaten the brahmin’s happiness again.
Jataka stories are sometimes criticized for their worldly application of the Bodhisatta’s skills, particularly in the area of wisdom. Solving this riddle is not obviously the product of wisdom as it is meant in the Buddha’s teaching: the ability to see the marks of not-self (anatta), impermanence (anicca) and unsatisfactoriness (dukkha) in all areas of existence. Neither does it teach a path to freedom or give obvious spiritual guidance, though his investigations do rid the brahmin of his rather pressing immediate fear as well as its root cause.
The story has, though, all the hallmarks of the way wisdom is described and enacted in early Buddhist discourses, where the Buddha is questioned and challenged by disciples and opponents about points of doctrine and practice. In the suttas the Buddha, confronted by a particular problem and person, uses discussion, close questioning and debate. 2He eliminates possibilities in his elucidation of particular doctrinal points. He posits a variety of alternative situations and chooses the most suitable. Sometimes he suggests a practical solution to deal with the root of a problem that may not even be known to the questioner himself: a set of meditation practices are suggested, or a formulation of truth which elicits wisdom and enlightenment in the person ready to gain arahatship that day. 3 He constantly illustrates points prefixed by the words ‘it is just as if’ (seyyathapi) when he creates new similes to explain a particular difficulty or to come up with an analogy. 4With this creative mixture of imagination, logic, intuition and direct confrontation, painstaking care is used to dissect a problem and cater to specific individuals and their needs. The questioner is brought to confront the true situation and a way forward is given to help him address it.
Metaphor and simile also play an important and overt part of the Jataka teaching method. Although the Bodhisatta does not make any analogies in his discussion here, the Buddha, in relating the story, does. The Bodhisatta follows the trail right back to the lethal source of the brahmin’s problems with a simple pragmatism that is stressed within the story. His success, it is said, is achieved as if he had used the divine eye, one of the higher knowledges (abhinnas) that are sometimes developed by the Bodhisatta and used by the Buddha in his final life. This ability to see what is happening far away as if it were nearby is rendered unnecessary given the Bodhisatta’s shrewd intellectual command of likely causes. It is a characteristic of early Buddhist texts that the psychic powers, although recognized and acknowledged as an important development in the path to Buddhahood, do not tend to be employed unless the situation requires it. For instance, when the aspirant Bodhisatta wishes to make the path smooth for the last Buddha he refrains from doing so through psychic powers, which he could, preferring to do the work by hand. 5 In his last life the Buddha often does employ the divine eye, but with the intent to instruct: he spots the difficulties of the struggling meditator, Moggallana, for instance, whom he then visits and teaches. 6 In this story, such a feat is just not needed.