No. 15. Kharādiya-Jātaka

The Jataka, Volume I, tr. by Robert Chalmers, [1895], at sacred-texts.com

No. 15.

KHARĀDIYA-JĀTAKA.

"For when a deer."--This story was told by the Master while at Jetavana about an unruly Brother. Tradition says that this Brother was unruly and would not heed admonition. Accordingly, the Master asked him, saying, "Is it true, as they say, that you are unruly and will not heed admonition?"

"It is true, Blessed One," was the reply.

"So too in bygone days," said the Master, "you were unruly and would not heed the admonition of the wise and good,--with the result that you were caught in a gin and met your death." And so saying, he told this story of the past.

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Once on a time when Brahmadatta was in Benares the Bodhisatta was born a deer and dwelt in the forest at the head of a herd of deer. His sister brought her son to him, saying, "Brother, this is your nephew; teach him deer's ruses." And thus she placed her son under the Bodhisatta's care. Said the latter to his nephew, "Come at such and such a time and I will give you a lesson." But the nephew made no appearance at the time appointed. And, as on that day, so on seven days did he skip his lesson and fail to learn the ruses of deer; and at last, as he was roaming about, he was caught in a gin. His mother came and said to the Bodhisatta, "Brother, was not your nephew taught deer's ruses?"

p. 47

"Take no thought for the unteachable rascal," said the Bodhisatta; [160] "your son failed to learn the ruses of deer." And so saying, having lost all desire to advise the scapegrace even in his deadly peril, he repeated this stanza:

But the hunter killed the self-willed deer that was caught in the snare, and departed with its flesh.

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When the Master had ended this lesson in support of what he had said as to the unruliness of the Brother in bygone days as well as in the present, he shewed the connexion, and identified the Birth, by saying "In those days this unruly Brother was the nephew-deer, Uppala-vaṇṇā ¹ was the sister, and I myself the deer who gave the admonition."

[Note. In the gāthā I have translated not the meaningless kālāhi of Fausböll's text, nor the easy variant kālehi, which is substituted in the gloss, but kalāhi, the more difficult reading which occurs in some Sinhalese MSS, and which is read by Fausböll in the analogous story No. 16. This reading is also given by Dickson in J. R. A. S. Ceylon, 1884, p. 188, from the Jātaka Pela Sanne. If kālehi be read, the translation becomes, "I do not try to teach one who has played truant seven times." In the J. R. A. S. Ceylon, 1884, p. 125, Künte says, "I have little doubt that kalāhi is the original form of the popular sing-song, and kālehi a mistake for it, and that on this mistake the grammarian compiler has built up his silly little story about the deer who would not go to school."]

Footnotes

47:1 See the interesting Life of this therī in Mrs Bode's 'Women Leaders of the Buddhist Reformation' (J. R. A. S. 1893, pp. 540-552), where it is explained that Uppala-vaṇṇā "came by that name because she had a skin like the colour in the heart of the dark-blue lotus."