Jataka Vol. I: Book I.--Ekanipāta: No. 146. Kaka-Jātaka
No. 146.
[497] KAKA-JĀTAKA.
"Our throats are tired."--This story was told by the Master while at Jetavana,
about a number of aged Brethren. Whilst they were still of the world, they were
rich and wealthy squires of Sāvatthi, all friends of one another; and tradition
tells us that while they were engaged in good works they heard the Master
preach. At once they cried, "We are old; what to us are house and home? Let us
join the Brotherhood, and following the Buddha's lovely doctrine make an end of
sorrow."
So they shared all their belongings amongst their children and families, and,
leaving their tearful kindred, they came to ask the Master to receive them into
the Brotherhood. But when admitted, they did not live the life of Brethren;
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and because of their age they failed to master the Truth 1. As in their life as
householders, so now too when they were Brethren they lived together, building
themselves a cluster of neighbouring huts on the skirts of the Monastery. Even
when they went in quest of alms, they generally made for their wives' and
children's houses and ate there. In particular, all these old men were
maintained by the bounty of the wife of one of their number, to whose house each
brought what he had received and there ate it, with sauces and curries which she
furnished. An illness having carried her oft; the aged Brethren went their way
back to the monastery, and falling on one another's necks walked about bewailing
the death of their benefactress, the giver of sauces. The noise of their
lamentation brought the Brethren to the spot to know what ailed them. And the
aged men told how their kind benefactress was dead, and that they wept because
they had lost her and should never see her like again. Shocked at such
impropriety, the Brethren talked together in the Hall of Truth about the cause
of the old men's sorrow, and they told the Master too, on his entering the Hall
and asking what they were discussing. "Ah, Brethren," said he, "in times past,
also, this same woman's death made them go about weeping and wailing; in those
days she was a crow and was drowned in the sea, and these were toiling hard to
empty all the water out of the sea in order to get her out, when the wise of
those days saved them."
And so saying he told this story of the past.
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Once on a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was a
sea-sprite. Now a crow with his mate came down in quest of food to the sea-shore
[498] where, just before, certain persons had been offering to the Nāgas a
sacrifice of milk, and rice, and fish, and meat and strong drink and the like.
Up came the crow and with his mate ate freely of the elements of the sacrifice,
and drank a great deal of the spirits. So they both got very drunk. Then they
wanted to disport themselves in the sea, and were trying to swim on the surf,
when a wave swept the hen-crow out to sea and a fish came and gobbled her up.
"Oh, my poor wife is dead," cried the crow, bursting into tears and
lamentations. Then a crowd of crows were drawn by his wailing to the spot to
learn what ailed him. And when he told them how his wife had been carried out to
sea, they all began with one voice to lament. Suddenly the thought struck them
that they were stronger than the sea and that all they had to do was to empty it
out and rescue their comrade! So they set to work with their bills to empty the
sea out by mouthfuls, betaking themselves to dry land to rest so soon as their
throats were sore with the salt water. And so they toiled away till their mouths
and jaws were dry and inflamed and their eyes bloodshot, and they were ready to
drop for weariness. Then in despair they turned to one another and said that it
was in vain they laboured to empty the sea,
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for no sooner had they got rid of the water in one place than more flowed in,
and there was all their work to do over again; they would never succeed in
baling the water out of the sea. And, so saying, they uttered this stanza:--
Our throats are tired, our mouths are sore;
The sea refilleth evermore.
Then all the crows fell to praising the beauty of her beak and eyes, her
complexion, figure and sweet voice, saying that it was her excellencies that had
provoked the sea to steal her from them. But [499] as they talked this nonsense,
the sea-sprite made a bogey appear from the sea and so put them all to flight.
In this wise they were saved.
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His lesson ended, the Master identified the Birth by saying, "The aged Brother's
wife was the hen-crow of those days, and her husband the male crow; the other
aged Brethren were the rest of the crows, and I the sea-sprite."
Footnotes
311:1 Buddhism combined reverence for age with mild contempt for aged novices
who, after a mundane life, vouchsafed the selvage of their days and faculties to
a creed only to be mastered by hard thinking and ardent zeal.
Next: No. 147. Puppharatta-Jātaka
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