Jataka 283
Vaḍḍhaki Sūkara Jātaka
The Carpenter’s Boar
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 another story that is highly dubious. It is probably one that dates from a more ancient time and was rolled into the Jātaka literature. The idea that a monk would give advice—even unknowingly—on military tactics is impossible to imagine. This is not at all in the spirit of the Dharma.
Having said that… it is an interesting insight into ancient military tactics. And if there is one positive theme in the story, it is how intelligence and teamwork can overcome large obstacles.
The story in the present chronicles historical facts as recorded in the Pāli Canon.
“The best, the best you always.” The Master told this story while he was at Jetavana. It is about the Elder Dhanuggahatissa.
Mahākosala, the father of King Pasenadi, when he married his daughter—the Lady Kosal—to King Bimbisāra, gave as a dowry the village of Kāsi. This village produced a revenue of 100,000 gold coins from bath and perfume money. When Ajātasattu murdered his father, King Bimbisāra, the Lady Kosala died of grief.
(In order to steal power from his father, Ajātasattu imprisoned his father and starved him to death. But the Lady Kosala delayed his death for a long time by sneaking food to him.)
Then King Pasenadi thought, “Ajātasattu has killed his father, and my sister has died from sympathy with her husband’s misfortune. I will not leave the town of Kāsi to this parricide.” So he refused to give it to Ajātasattu.
A war ensued over the village. Ajātasattu was fierce and strong, and Pasenadi was a very old man, so he was beaten again and again. The people of Kosala usually lost. Then the King asked his courtiers, “We are constantly being beaten. What can be done?” “My lord,” they said, “the venerable monks are skilled in powers. We must hear the word of the those who live in the Jetavana monastery.” So the King dispatched couriers, bidding them listen to the advice of the Saṇgha at a suitable time.
Now at the time there were two old Elders living in a leaf-hut close to the monastery. Their names were Elder Utta and Elder Dhanuggahatissa. Dhanuggahatissa had slept through the first and second watch of the night. Awaking in the last watch, he broke some sticks, lit a fire and sat down. He said, “Utta, my friend!” “What is it, friend Tissa?” “Are you not asleep?” “Now we are awake. What is to be done?” “Get up, now, and sit by me.” So he did, and they began to talk. “That foolish, pot-bellied King of Kosala never has a jar full of boiled rice without letting it spoil. He does not know one bit how to plan a war. He is always being beaten and forced to pay tribute.”
“But what should he do?”
Now just then the couriers stood listening to their conversation. The Elder Dhanuggahatissa discussed the nature of war. “War, sir,” he said, “is of three kinds: the lotus army, the wheel army, and the wagon army.”
(These are military formations. In the wheel, one end stays stationary while the other soldiers pivot around it. The wagon is a wedge-shaped phalanx, and the lotus is “equally extended on all sides and perfectly circular, the center being occupied by the king.”)
He continued. “If those who wish to capture Ajātasattu will post garrisons in two hill forts and have them pretend that they are weak, he can watch them until the enemy gets between them among the hills. Then he can bar his passage, leap out from the two forts and take him in front and in the rear. They will quickly have him like a landed fish, like a frog in the fist. And in this way they will be able to defeat him.”
The couriers told all of this to their King. The King caused the drum to be beaten for the attack. He arranged his army in a wagon formation and took Ajātasattu alive. He gave his daughter, Princess Vajirā, in marriage to his sister’s (Lady Kosala) son, and he sent her off with the Kāsi village as her dowry.
This event became known among the Saṇgha. One day they were talking about it in the Dharma Hall. “Friend, I hear that the King of Kosala conquered Ajātasattu through the advice of Dhanuggahatissa.” The Master came in and said, “What were you just discussing now, brothers?” They told him. He said, “This is not the first time that Dhanuggahatissa was clever in discussing war.” And he told him this story from the past.
Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta came to life as a tree spirit. At that time there were some carpenters living in a village near Benares. One of them, when he went into the forest to get wood, found a young boar who had fallen into a pit. He took the boar home and kept it.
The boar grew big. He had curved tusks, but he was a well-mannered creature. Because the carpenter kept him, he went by the name of Carpenter’s Boar. When the carpenter would chop down a tree, the boar would turn the tree over with his snout. Then he would fetch the hatchet, adze, chisel, and mallet with his teeth. Then he would pull along the measuring line to the end.
But the carpenter was afraid somebody might kill him and eat him up. So he took him into the forest and set him free. The boar ran into the forest looking for a safe and pleasant place to live. At last he saw a great cave up on a mountain side. There were plenty of bulbs and roots and fruits. It was a pleasant place to live. But hundreds of other boars saw him and approached him.
He said to them, “This is just what I am looking for, and now I have found it. This seems like a nice place. And now I mean to live here with all of you.”
“It is certainly a nice place,” they said, “but it is also dangerous.”
“Ah,” he said, “as soon as I saw you, I wondered how it was that those who live in so plentiful a place could be so meagre in flesh and blood. What is it you are afraid of?”
“There is a tiger that comes in the morning, and every one he sees he seizes and carries off.”
“Does this always happen, or only now and then?”
“Always.”
“How many tigers are there?”
“Only one.”
“What? Is one tiger too many for all of you!”
“Yes, sir.”
“I will catch him if you do what I tell you. Where does this tiger live?”
“On that hill over there.”
So at night he drilled the boars and prepared them to fight the tiger. He explained to them the science of battle. “Wars are of three kinds: the lotus army, the wheel army, and the wagon army.” He arranged them in the lotus pattern. He knew the place that gave them the best advantage. He said, “Here is where we must have our battle.”
He placed the mothers and their suckling brood in the middle. Around them he put the sows that had no young. Around those, he put the little boars. Around those, he put those who were rather young. Around those, he placed all whose tusks were grown. And around these, he put the boars fit for battle, strong and powerful, by tens and by twenties. In this way he placed them in close ranks.
In front of his own position he dug a round hole. Behind it he dug a pit that got gradually deeper and deeper. It was shaped like a winnowing basket. (A winnowing basket has low walls on three sides, two of them sloping towards the open end.) As he moved among them, followed by 60 or 70 boars, he bid them to be of good courage. Then the dawn broke.
The tiger woke up. “It is time now!” he thought. He trotted along until he caught sight of them. Then he stopped still on the plateau, glaring at the crowd of boars. “Glare back at him!” cried the Carpenter’s Boar, with a signal to the rest. They all glared. The tiger opened his mouth and drew a long breath. The boars all did likewise. The tiger relieved himself, and so did the boars. Whatever the tiger did, the boars did as well.
“Why, what is this!” the tiger wondered. “They used to take to their heels as soon as they saw me. Indeed they were too frightened to even run. Now they not only do not run, they actually stand up against me! Whatever I do, they mimic. There’s a fellow over there on a commanding position. He is the one who has organized the rabble. Well, I don’t see how to defeat them.” And he turned away and went back to his lair.
Now there was a sham hermit who used to get a share of the tiger’s prey. This time the tiger returned empty-handed. Noticing this, the hermit repeated the following stanza.
“The best, the best you always brought before
When you went hunting after the wild boar.
Now empty-handed you consume with grief,
Today where is the strength you had before?”
At this address, the Tiger repeated another stanza:
“Once they would hurry/scurry all about
To find their holes, a panic-stricken rout.
But now they grunt in closed ranks compact,
Invincible, they stand and face me out.”
“Oh, don’t be afraid of them!” urged the hermit. “One roar and one leap will frighten them out of their wits and send them running away.” The tiger gave in to his insistence. Gathering up his courage, he went back and stood on the plateau.
The Carpenter’s Boar stood between the two pits. “See Master! Here is the scoundrel again!” cried the boars. “Oh, don’t be afraid,” he said, “we have him now.”
With a roar the tiger leaped at the Carpenter’s Boar. At the very instant he sprang, the boar dodged and dropped straight into the round hole. The tiger could not stop, but tumbled over and over and fell into a heap in the jaws of the other pit where it got very narrow. The boar jumped up out of his hole, and quick as lightning he ran his tusk into the tiger’s thighs. He tore into his kidneys, buried his fangs in the creature’s sweet flesh, and wounded him in his head. Then he tossed him out of the pit, crying aloud, “Here is your enemy for you!”
Figure: The tiger takes the bait
The boars who showed up first had tiger to eat. But those who came later went about sniffing at the others’ mouths asking what tiger’s flesh tasted like!
But the boars were still uneasy. “What is the matter now”" asked the Carpenter’s Boar, who had noticed their hesitation.
“Master,” they said, “it is all very well to kill one tiger, but the sham hermit can bring ten more tigers!”
“Who is he?”
“A wicked ascetic.”
“I have killed the tiger. Do you think that a man can hurt me? Come along, and we’ll get him, too.” So they all set out.
Now the man had been wondering why the tiger was taking so long to return. “Could the boars have caught him?” he thought. So he started off to meet him, and as he went, there came the boars! He snatched up his belongings and off he ran. The boars tore after him. He threw away his possessions and with all possible speed climbed up a fig tree.
“Now, Master, it’s hopeless!” cried the herd. “The man has climbed a tree!”
“What tree?” their leader asked.
“A fig tree,” they replied.
“Oh, very well,” the leader said. “The sows must bring water, the young ones must dig around the tree, the tuskers must tear at the roots, and everyone else can surround the tree and watch.”
They did their tasks as he had told them. Then he charged full speed at a great thick root. It was like an axe blow, and with this one blow he knocked the tree to the ground. The boars were waiting for the man. They knocked him down, tore him to pieces, and gnawed his bones clean in an instant!
Then they put the Carpenter’s Boar on top of the tree trunk. They filled the dead man’s shell with water and sprinkled the boar with it to consecrate him as their king. They also consecrated a young sow to be his consort.
This, the saying goes, is the origin of the custom still observed. When people make a king nowadays, he is placed on a fine chair of fig wood and sprinkled out of three shells.
A sprite that lived in that forest watched this entire marvel. Appearing before the boars in a cleft of the tree trunk, he repeated the third stanza:
“Honor to all the tribes assembled be!
A wondrous union I myself did see!
How tuskers once a tiger overcame
By federal strength and tusked unity!”
After this discourse the Master identified the birth: “Dhanuggaha the Elder was the Carpenter’s Boar, and I was the tree sprite.”
