Jataka 147
Puppharatta Jātaka
The Red Flower
as told by Eric Van Horn
originally translated by Robert Chalmers, B.A., of Oriel College, Oxford University
originally edited by Professor Edward Byles Cowell, Cambridge University
Have you ever suffered from poor judgment when it comes to romance? If the answer is “yes,” then this is your story.
“I do not count it as pain.” This story was told by the Master while he was at Jetavana. It is about a monk who was overwhelmed by passion. Being questioned by the Master, he admitted his fault, explaining that he longed for the wife of his worldly life. “For, oh sir!” he said, “she is such a sweet woman that I cannot live without her.”
“Brother,” the Master said, “she is harmful to you. In former days she was the cause of you being impaled on a stake. And it was for bewailing her at your death that you were reborn in hell. So why do you now long for her?” And so saying, he told the following story of the past.
Once upon a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born as a spirit of the air. Now in Benares they were holding the night-festival of Kattikā (the last month of the rainy season). the city was decorated like a city of the gods, and all of the people were on holiday.
There was a poor man who had only a couple of coarse cloths which he had washed and pressed until they were in 100, even 1,000 creases. But his wife said, “My husband, I want a safflower-colored (red) cloth to wear as I go about at the festival with you.”
“How are poor people like us to get safflowers?” said he. “Put on your nice clean clothing and come along.”
“If I can’t have my clothes dyed with safflower, I don’t want to go at all,” his wife said. “Get some other woman to go to the festival with you.”
“Why are you torturing me like this? How are we to get safflowers?”
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” the woman retorted. "Are there no safflowers in the King’s greenhouses?”
“Wife,” he said, “the King’s conservatories are like a pool haunted by an ogre. There’s no getting in there with such a strong guard on the watch. Give up this fantasy and be content with what you have.”
“But when it’s night-time and dark,” she said, “what’s to keep a man from going where he wants?”
As she persisted in her pleading, his love for her at last made him give in. He promised that she should have her wish. Risking his life, he went out of the city at night and got into the greenhouses by breaking down the fence. But the noise he made breaking down the fence alerted the guards who went off to catch the thief. They soon caught him and. They beat him, cursed him, and put him in chains.
In the morning he was brought before the King who ordered him to be impaled alive. He was hauled off with his hands tied behind his back. They led him out of the city to his execution to the sound of the drum, and then he was impaled alive.
Figure: A Woeful Lack of Good Judgment
His pain was agonizing. And to make it worse, crows settled on his head and pecked out his eyes with their dagger-like beaks. Yet, heedless of his pain and thinking only of his wife, the man murmured to himself, “Alas, I shall miss going to the festival with my wife arrayed in safflower-colored cloths with her arms wrapped around my neck.” So saying, he uttered this stanza:
I do not count it as pain that, here impaled,
I am torn by crows. My heartfelt pain is this,
That my dear wife will not keep holiday
Attired in gay clothing of red hue.
And as he was babbling about his wife, he died and was reborn in hell.
His lesson ended, the Master identified the birth by saying, “This husband and wife were the husband and wife of those days also, and I was the spirit of the air who made their story known.”
