Jataka 236
Baka Jātaka
The Crane
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 story is full of Indian lore having to do with cranes and a metaphor for being “born again.” A deceitful crane is trying to capture some fish. Fortunately the Bodhisatta, who is their leader, sees through the trickery.
“See that twice-born bird.” The Master told this story when he was staying in Jetavana. It is about a hypocrite. When he was brought before the Master, the Master said, “Monks, he was a hypocrite of old just as he is now,” and he told the following story.
Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was the King of Benares, the Bodhisatta was born as a fish in a certain pond in the Himalaya region. Following him was a great school of fish.
Now there was a crane who wanted to eat the fish. So in a place near the pond he drooped his head, spread out his wings, and looked vacantly at the fish, waiting until they were off their guard. (There is an Indian proverb for trickery called a “crane’s sleep.”) At that moment the Bodhisatta and his followers came to that place in search of food. And the school of fish - on seeing the crane - uttered the first stanza:
“See that twice-born bird, how white,
Like a water-lily seeming,
Wings outspread to left and right,
Oh, how pious! dreaming, dreaming!”
(The “twice-born bird” is born once when it cracks open the egg and then a second time when it first uses its wings to fly. This image is used in India to metaphorically represent “piety,” “purity” or being “born-again.” In Buddhism this means undertaking the Noble Eightfold Path, attaining stream-entry, or in its highest form becoming an arahant. So in the first stanza the “fish followers” are paying the crane a compliment.)
Then the Bodhisatta looked, and uttered the second stanza:
“What he is you do not know,
Or you would not sing his praises.
He is our most treacherous foe,
That is why no wing he raises.”
Figure: “What he is you do not know!”
Thereupon the fish splashed in the water and drove the crane away.
When the Master ended this discourse, he identified the birth: “Roja the Mallian was the Benares merchant, and I was Vacchanakha the recluse.”
