Jataka 285
Maṇisūkara Jātaka
The Boar’s Crystal
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 Jātaka is based on a story that is referenced in the Dhammapada and explained more fully in the Dhammapada commentary. It is also found in the Sundarī Sutta in the Udāna. It is sutta 4.8.)
“To hell he shall go.” The Master told this story at Jetavana. It is about the murder of Sundarī. At that time we learn that the Bodhisatta was honored and respected. The circumstances were the same as in the Kandhaka. This is an abstract of them.
(This reference to the Khandaka is apparently mistaken. The reference probably is intended to be the Udāna.)
The Saṇgha of the Blessed One had received gain and honor, like five rivers pouring in a mighty flood. The competing recluses were jealous. Gain and honor no longer came to them. They became dim like fireflies at sunrise. So they gathered together and discussed the situation.
“Ever since the sāmanera (wanderer) Gotama appeared, our gain and glory has gone from us. Not a soul even knows that we exist. Who will help us to discredit Gotama and prevent him from getting all this renown?”
Then an idea occurred to them. “Sundarī will make us able to do it.” (Sundarī was a female wandering ascetic.)
So one day Sundarī visited their grove. They greeted her, but then they said nothing more. She addressed them again and again, but she received no reply.
“Has anything annoyed the wandering ascetics?” she asked. “Why, sister,” they said, “do you not see how the sāmanera Gotama annoys us, depriving us of alms and honor?”
“What can I do about it?” she said.
“You, sister, are fair and lovely. You can bring disgrace to Gotama, and your words will influence a great many. In this way you can restore our gains and good reputations.”
She agreed and took her leave.
After this she used to take flowers and scents and perfumes, camphor (an aromatic), condiments and fruits, and in the evening, when a great crowd entered the city after hearing the Master’s discourse, she would head towards Jetavana. If anyone asked where she was going, she would say, “To the priest Gotama. I live with him in a perfumed chamber.”
Then she would spend the night in the rival ascetics settlement. But in the morning she entered the road which led from Jetavana into the city. If anyone asked her where she was going, she replied, “I have been with the priest Gotama in a perfumed chamber, and he made love to me.”
After the lapse of some days the rival ascetics hired some ruffians to kill Sundarī near Gotama’s chamber. They threw her body into a dust heap. Then the scoundrels made a hue and cry about Sundarī. They told the King (Pasenadi) that she had been murdered. He asked who they suspected. They answered that she had gone to Jetavana for the last few days, but they did not know what had happened afterwards.
He sent them to search for her. Acting on his permission, they took his own servants and went to Jetavana. There they hunted until they found her body in the dust heap. Calling for a litter, they brought the body into the town. They told the King that the disciples of Gotama had killed Sundarī and thrown her in the dust heap in order to cover up the misconduct of their Master.
The King ordered them to scour the city. All through the streets they went, crying, “Come and see what has been done by the monks of the Sakya prince!” Then they went back to the palace door. The King had placed the body of Sundarī on a platform and had it watched in the cemetery. All of the people—except the Buddha’s disciples—went about the town, inside and outside, in the parks and in the woods, abusing the Buddha’s monks. They cried out, “Come and see what the followers of the Sakya prince have done!”
The monks reported all this to the Buddha. The Master said, “Well, go and reprove these people with these words”:
“To hell shall go he that delights in lies,
And he who having done a thing, denies,
Both these, when death has carried them away,
As men of evil deeds elsewhere shall rise.”
(A similar verse is in the Dhammapada. It is verse 306.)
The King told some of his men to find out whether Sundarī had been killed by anybody else. Now the ruffians had drunk the blood-money, and they were quarrelling together. One said to another, “You killed Sundarī with one blow and then threw her in the dust heap, and here you are, buying liquor with the blood-money!”
“All right, all right,” said the King’s messengers who had overheard this conversation. They caught the ruffians and dragged them before the King.
“Did you kill her?” asked the King. They admitted that, yes, they did.
“Who told you to do this?”
“The rival ascetics, my lord.”
The King had the ascetics summoned.
“Lift up Sundarī,” he said, “and carry her around the city, crying as you go, ‘This woman Sundarī wanted to bring disgrace upon the priest Gotama. We had her murdered. The guilt is not Gotama’s nor his disciples. The guilt is ours!’”
And so they did as they were ordered. Then they received the punishment for murder.
After this the Buddha's reputation grew even greater. And then one day they began to discuss this incident in the Dharma Hall. “Friend, the scoundrels thought to discredit the Buddha, but they only discredited themselves. Ever since our gains and reputations have increased!”
The Master came in and asked what they were discussing. They told him. “Monks,” he said, “it is impossible to make the Buddha impure. Trying to stain the Buddha is like trying to stain a gem of the first water. In bygone ages people have wished to stain a fine jewel, and no matter how they tried, they failed to do it.” And he told him this story from the past.
Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was the King of Benares, the Bodhisatta was born into a brahmin family. When he grew up, perceiving the suffering that arises from desire, he went away. He traveled around the three ranges of the Himalaya Mountains where he became a hermit and lived in a hut of leaves.
Near his hut there was a crystal cave in which lived thirty boars. Near the cave there was a lion who used to range. His shadow used to be reflected in the crystal. The boars used to see this reflection. They were afraid to go out, and so they became lean and thin-blooded. They thought, “We see the reflection because this crystal is clear. We will make it dirty and discolor it.”
So they got some mud from a pool nearby. They rubbed and rubbed the crystal with it. But the crystal, being constantly polished by the boars’ bristles, got brighter than ever.
Figure: The lion in the crystal wall
They did not know how to manage it, so they determined to ask the hermit how they might discolor the crystal. So they went to him, and after a respectful greeting, they sat down beside him and uttered these two verses:
“Seven summers we have been
Thirty in a crystal grot.
Now we are keen to dull the sheen,
But dull it we cannot.
“Though we try with all our might
To obscure its brilliancy,
Still more bright shines forth the light,
What can the reason be?”
(A “grot” is a cave.)
The Bodhisatta listened. Then he repeated the third stanza:
“’Tis precious crystal, spotless, bright, and pure,
No glass—its brilliancy forever sure.
Nothing on earth its brightness can impair.
Boars, you had best remove yourselves elsewhere.”
And so, on hearing this answer, they did,. The Bodhisatta lost himself in meditative rapture and became destined to be reborn in Brahma’s world.
After this discourse ended, the Master identified the birth: “At that time, I was the hermit.”
