Jataka 272
Vyaggha Jātaka
The Tiger Story
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 reminiscent of the famous story in the Pāli Canon about Sāriputta, Moggallāna, and Devadatta. Devadatta had been thrown out of the Buddha’s Saṇgha after which he started his own group. He managed to convince 500 young Buddhist monks to join him. One night Sāriputta and Moggallāna went to see if they could convince them to return. Devadatta thought they had come to join him. Devadatta was giving talks deep into the night. Eventually he got tired and asked Sāriputta to talk. When Devadatta fell asleep, the young monks were convinced to return to the Buddha. When Devadatta awoke and realized what had happened, “hot blood came from Deavadatta’s mouth.” This story is found in the Vinaya in the Seventh Khandhaka of the Kullavagga.
“What time the nearness.” The Master told this story while living at Jetavana. It is about Kokālika. (Kokālika was a follower of the heretic Devadatta.) The circumstances of this story will be given in the Takkāriya Jātaka (Jātaka 481).
Here Kokālika said, “I will take Sāriputta and Moggallāna with me.” So having left Kokālika’s country, he travelled to Jetavana. There he greeted the Master and went on to the Elders (Sāriputta and Moggallāna.) He said, “Friends, the citizens of Kokālika's country summon you. Let us go there!” “Go yourself, friend, we won’t,” was the answer. After this refusal he went away by himself.
The monks got to talking about this in the Dharma Hall. “Friend! Kokālika can’t live with Sāriputta and Moggallāna or without them! He can’t put up with their company!” The Master came in and asked what they were discussing. They told him. He said, “In past days, just as now, Kokālika couldn’t live with Sāriputta and Moggallāna or without them.” And he told them this story from the past.
Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was the King of Benares, the Bodhisatta was a tree spirit living in a wood. Not far from his home there lived another tree spirit in a great monarch of the forest. In the same forest there lived a lion and a tiger. For fear of them no one dared to till the earth or cut down a tree. No one could even pause to look at it. The lion and tiger used to kill and eat all manner of creatures. And what remained after eating, they left on the spot so that the forest was full of foul decaying stench.
The other spirit, being foolish and knowing neither reason nor unreason, one day said to the Bodhisatta, “Good friend, the forest is full of foul stench all because of this lion and this tiger. I will drive then away.”
He said, “Good friend, it is these two creatures who protect our homes. Once they are driven off our homes will be made desolate. If men do not see the lion and the tiger tracks, they will cut the forest down. They will make it all one open space. They will till the land. Please do not do this thing!”And then he uttered the first two stanzas:
“What time the nearness of a bosom friend
Threatens your peace to end,
If you are wise, guard your supremacy
Like the apple of your eye.
“But when your bosom friend does more increase
The measure of your peace,
Let your friend’s life in everything right through
Be dear as yours to you.”
When the Bodhisatta had thus explained the matter, the foolish sprite nonetheless did not take it to heart. One day assumed an awful shape and drove away the lion and tiger. The people, no longer seeing their footprints, realized that the lion and tiger must have gone to another wood. They proceeded to cut down one side of this wood. Then the sprite came up to the Bodhisatta and said to him, “Ah, friend, I did not do as you said, but I drove the creatures away. And now men have found out that they are gone, and they are cutting down the wood! What is to be done?” The reply was, that they had gone to live in a certain wood. The sprite must go and fetch them back. The sprite did this, and, standing in front of them he repeated the third stanza, with a respectful salute:
“Come back, O Tigers! to the wood again,
And let it not be levelled with the plain,
For, without you, the axe will lay it low,
You, without it, forever homeless go.”
They refused this request, saying, “Go away! we will not come.” The sprite returned to the forest alone. And the men after a very few days cut down all the wood. They made fields and brought them under cultivation.
Figure: The tree sprite makes her pitch
When the sprite ended this discourse, he taught the Four Noble Truths and then he identified the birth: “Kokālika was the foolish sprite, Sāriputta was the lion, Moggallāna was the Tiger, and I was the wise sprite.”
