Jataka 239
Harita Māta Jātaka
The Green Frog
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 a story where a predator becomes the prey after the Bodhisatta shows his friends the fish his weakness.
“When I was in their cage.” The Master told this story while he was at the Bamboo Grove Monastery (Veluvana). It is about Ajātasattu.
Mahā-Kosala, the father of the King of Kosala, gave his daughter a village when she married King Bimbisāra. After Ajātasattu murdered his father Bimbisāra, the queen soon died from her love for him. But even after his mother’s death, Ajātasattu still received the revenues from this village. The King of Kosala (Pasenadi) proclaimed that no one who had committed patricide should have a village which was his by right of inheritance, and he declared war on Ajātasattu.
Sometimes the uncle got the best of him, and sometimes the nephew won. And when Ajātasattu was victorious, he raised his banner and marched through the country back to his capital in triumph. But when he lost, he returned all downcast without letting anyone know.
It happened that on one day the monks sat talking about this in the Dharma Hall. “Friend,” so one would say, “Ajātasattu is delighted when he beats his uncle, and when he loses he is downcast.” The Master entered the Dharma Hall and asked what they were discussing. They told him. He said, “Monks, this is not the first time that the man has been happy when he was victorious and miserable when he was not.” And he told them this story from the past.
Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was the King of Benares, the Bodhisatta was born as a green frog. At the time people put wicker cages in all of the pits and holes of the rivers to catch fish. In one cage there were a large number of fish. And a water snake who was eating the fish went into the trap himself. Many of the fish ganged together to attack and bite him until he was covered with blood. Seeing that there was no help, in fear of his life he slipped out of the mouth of the cage and lay down full of pain on the edge of the water.
At the same moment, the green frog leaped and fell into the mouth of the trap. The snake, not knowing to whom he could appeal for help, asked the frog, “Friend frog, are you pleased with the behavior of those fish?” and he uttered the first stanza:
“When I was in their cage, the fish did bite
Me, though a snake. Green frog, does that seem right?”
Then the frog answered him, “Yes, friend snake, it does. Why not? If you eat fish which get into your domain, the fish eat you when you get into theirs. In his own place and district and feeding ground no one is weak.” So saying, he uttered the second stanza:
“Men rob as long as they can accomplish it;
And when they cannot, why, the biter’s bit!”
After the Bodhisatta declared this view, all the fish saw the snake’s weakness. They cried, “Let us seize our foe!” and coming out of the cage, they bit him to death then and there, after which they departed.
Figure: “Let us seize our foe!”
When the Master ended this discourse, he identified the birth: “Ajātasattu was the water snake, and I was the green frog.”
