Jataka 209
Kakkara Jātaka
The Jungle Cock
as told by Eric Van Horn
originally translated by William Henry Denham Rouse, Cambridge University
originally edited by Professor Edward Byles Cowell, Cambridge University
This is one of those stories where it isn’t clear what the relationship is between the story-in-the-present and the Jātaka. Still, it is a nice tale about a bird who outwits his hunter and even speaks to him in a human voice!
“Trees a many have I seen.” The Master told this story while he was at Jetavana. It about a monk who was a student of the Elder Sāriputta, Marshall of the Faith.
This fellow, we learn, was skilled at taking care of his body. He would not eat food that was very hot or very cold for fear it would hurt him. He never went out for fear of being hurt by cold or heat, and he would not eat rice that was either over-boiled or too hard.
The Saṇgha learned how much care he took of himself. They all discussed it in the Dharma Hall. “Friend, what a clever fellow monk he is to know what is good for him!” The Master came in and asked what they were discussing as they sat there together. They told him. Then he said, “Not only now is our young friend careful for his personal comfort. He was just the same in days gone by.” And he told them this story from the past.
Once upon a time, during the reign of Brahmadatta, King of Benares, the Bodhisatta was reborn as a tree-sprite in a forest glade. A certain fowler, with a decoy bird, hair noose, and stick, went into the forest in search of birds. He began to follow one old bird who flew off into the woods trying to escape. The bird would not give him any opportunity to catch it in his snare, but kept rising and falling, rising and falling. So the fowler covered himself with twigs and branches and set his noose and stick again and again. But the bird, wishing to make him ashamed of himself, spoke in a human voice and repeated the first stanza:
“Trees a many have I seen
Growing in the woodland green,
But, oh tree, they could not do
Any such strange things as you!”
Figure: “Trees a many have I seen”
So saying, the bird flew off. When it had gone, the fowler repeated the second verse:
“This old bird, that knows the snare,
Off has flown into the air,
Forth from out his cage has broken,
And with human voice has spoken!”
So said the fowler. He went off to hunt in the woods, took what he could catch, and went home again.
When the Master had ended this discourse, he identified the birth: “Devadatta was the fowler then, the young dandy was the bird, and I was the tree-sprite that saw the whole thing.”
