Jataka 297
Kāma Vilāpa Jātaka
Lamenting Passion
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 references Jātaka 147. This is a story about a man who has such passion for his wife that she convinced him to do something illegal to get her some flowers that she craved. He was caught, and the King ordered him to be impaled. It is a… cautionary tale.
“O bird, that fliest.” The Master told this story at Jetavana. It is about a man who longed for his former wife. The circumstances which called it forth are explained in the Puppharatta Jātaka (Jātaka 147) and the tale of the past in the Indriya Jātaka (Jātaka 423).
Figure: Impaled by passion
So the man was impaled alive. As he hung there, he looked up and saw a crow flying through the air. And, overwhelmed with pain, he hailed the crow to send a message to his dear wife, repeating these verses following:
“O bird, that fliest in the sky!
O winged bird, that fliest high!
Tell my wife, with thighs so fair,
Long will seem the time to her.
“She knows not sword and spear are set,
Full wroth and angry she will fret.
That is my torment and my fear,
And not that I am hanging here.
“My lotus-mail I have put by,
And jewels in my pillow lie,
And soft Benares cloth beside.
With wealth let her be satisfied.”
With these lamentations, he died.
When the Master had ended this discourse, he taught the Four Noble Truths. When his teaching concluded, the lovesick brother attained the fruition of the First Path (stream-entry) and he declared the birth: “The wife then was the wife now, and I was the spirit who saw this.”
