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Jataka Tales — Birth Stories of the Buddha

c. 300 BCE – 500 CE (compilation) · Ancient India (c. 3rd century BCE – 5th century CE) · India (Pali canon compiled in Ceylon/Sri Lanka)

The Monkey King (Jataka 407)

1Long ago in a mango grove on the Ganges river, there dwelt a great troop of monkeys,
2eighty thousand in number, whose king was a monkey of huge size and wisdom.
3In the midst of the grove stood one great mango tree — its fruit sweeter and larger than all others.
4The king said to his troop: "This tree grows over the water.
5When the fruit ripens, one may fall into the river. If it should float downstream to the king of men,
6he will taste it, and then he will send hunters and drive us all away, or slay us."
7So the monkeys plucked every mango that grew on the water side,
8and left only those over the shore.
9But one mango, hidden by an ants' nest, they overlooked.
10It fell into the river and floated down to the palace of Brahmadatta, king of Benares.
11The king tasted it and marvelled at its sweetness.
12He sailed upstream with his hunters and found the tree.
13"Slay the monkeys," he said. "But bring me the fruit."

The King of Monkeys Saves His Troop

14At sunset the archers took their stand, and prepared to shoot.
15Then the great Monkey King saw the danger. Immediately he leapt to the top of a nearby tree,
16then across a hundred bow-lengths to another,
17then to a bamboo growing on the far bank of the Ganges.
18There he plucked a long shoot of bamboo, and with one end tied it to the tree on the far bank,
19and the other to his own foot, and leapt back to the mango tree.
20But the length of bamboo was too short by the length of his own body.
21So he stretched himself out, and clung with his forepaws to the mango tree,
22and cried out to his troop: "Cross over on my back!"
23Eighty thousand monkeys crossed on his back, treading upon him.
24Every one of them was saved.
25But among them was Devadatta — a monkey filled with malice — who came last of all.
26Instead of crossing lightly, he leapt down with all his force upon the king's back,
27and broke it.
28The Monkey King fell into the water.

King Brahmadatta Recognises Nobility

29King Brahmadatta, watching this from the shore, was astonished.
30"This monkey has done what no man could do," he said.
31He sent his men to lift the Monkey King out of the river,
32and laid him gently on a couch.
33"Great monkey, what led you to sacrifice yourself for the others?"
34"O King," said the Monkey King, "of your body you are king;
35but of my troop I am king. Rulers exist for their people, not people for their rulers.
36A king who lets his people perish, when he might save them, is no king at all —
37only a name."
38With these words, the Monkey King died.
39King Brahmadatta gave him a great funeral, and returned home a changed man.
40From that day forth he ruled his people not for his own gain, but for theirs.
41The Master, having finished this tale, said:
42"Devadatta was the wicked monkey then; my disciples, the troop; and I myself
43was the Monkey King. Even so have I saved my disciples again and again in past lives,
44and given up my own life for their sake."

The Hare in the Moon (Jataka 316)

45Long ago, the Bodhisattva was born as a hare.
46He lived in a forest with three friends — a monkey, a jackal, and an otter.
47The hare taught them: "Give of what you have to those in need.
48Keep the sabbath. This is the way of the wise."
49Now Sakka, the king of the gods, wished to test the hare's virtue.
50He took the form of a Brahmin, and came to the four beasts, saying:
51"I have travelled far and am hungry. Give me food."
52The monkey brought mangoes.
53The jackal brought curds and lizards.
54The otter brought a fish he had found abandoned by fishermen.
55The hare said: "Alas, I have no food but the grass of the field.
56But I will give thee myself."
57He kindled a great fire and said:
58"Wait here, Brahmin. When the fire is hot enough, I shall leap into it,
59and thou mayest eat my roasted flesh."
60He shook himself three times, so that if any insects were on his fur they might escape,
61and then leapt into the fire.
62But the fire did not burn him. It was cold as ice.
63The Brahmin revealed himself as Sakka, and said:
64"Great is thy virtue, O hare. I will make thy deed known throughout the ages."
65He took the hare in his hands, and painted the image of the hare upon the face of the moon,
66so that all men in all ages might see, and remember,
67and know that in this world a small creature may do what the greatest cannot.

The Elephant and the Blind Men (Jataka 464)

68Long ago, a king of Benares gathered together all the blind men of the city,
69and had them shown a great elephant.
70Each blind man was allowed to feel the elephant, but only in one place.
71One touched the head; another the ear; another the tusk; another the trunk;
72another the body; another the leg; another the tail.
73When each had felt the elephant, the king asked each what an elephant was like.
74The one who had felt the head said: "An elephant is like a great water-jar."
75The one who had felt the ear said: "It is like a winnowing-basket."
76The one who had felt the tusk said: "It is like a plough-share."
77The one who had felt the trunk said: "It is like a plough-shaft."
78The one who had felt the body said: "It is like a great store-house."
79The one who had felt the leg said: "It is like a pillar."
80The one who had felt the tail said: "It is like a broom."
81Then they fell to quarrelling, each saying, "It is like this; it is not like that."
82And they came to blows.
83The king laughed, and said:
84"So it is with those who take one aspect of the truth,
85and mistake it for the whole."

notes

The Jataka Tales are stories of the previous lives of the Bodhisattva — the being who eventually became the historical Buddha Gautama. In the Theravada Buddhist canon, they form one of the fifteen books of the Khuddaka Nikaya, comprising 547 tales in verse and prose. In their present form they were compiled and translated into Pali in Sri Lanka around the 5th century CE, but the underlying stories, and often the verses within them, are much older — the earliest are contemporary with the earliest Buddhist teachings themselves. The Jataka tradition proceeds by moral typology: in each of his past lives, the Bodhisattva perfects one of the ten paramitas (perfections) — generosity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolution, loving-kindness, equanimity. The tales are populated by animals as well as humans, and many of them (the fox, the crow, the hare, the elephant) show clear parallels to Aesop's fables in the Greek tradition and to the Panchatantra in India. The three tales excerpted above illustrate the range: the Great Monkey King (renunciation and sacrifice for one's people), the Hare in the Moon (total generosity — the moon-hare motif appears also in Chinese and Aztec traditions), and the Blind Men and the Elephant (a parable of the partiality of individual perspectives on truth, made famous in the West by John Godfrey Saxe's 1872 poem based on this tale). The Jataka Tales have entered world literature in ways their Buddhist origin often obscures. The story of Barlaam and Josaphat, a Christian saint's legend widely read in medieval Europe, is a Jataka tale that reached the West via Manichean and Islamic intermediaries; "Josaphat" is a corruption of "Bodhisattva." Translation: E.B. Cowell (general editor), "The Jataka: Or Stories of the Buddha's Former Births," 6 vols., Cambridge University Press, 1895–1907. Public domain. Presented here as selected tales.

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