Jataka Vol. I: Book I.--Ekanipāta: No. 139. Ubhatobhaṭṭha-Jātaka
No. 139.
UBHATOBHAṬṬHA-JĀTAKA.
"His blinding and her beating."--This story the Master told while at the Bamboo
Grove, about Devadatta. We hear that the Brethren, meeting together in the Hall
of Truth, spoke one with another, saying that even as a torch from a pyre,
charred at both ends and bedunged in the middle, does not serve as wood either
in forest-tree or village-hearth, so Devadatta by giving up the world to follow
this saving faith had only achieved a twofold shortcoming and failure, seeing
that he had missed the comforts of a-lay life yet had fallen short of his
vocation as a Brother.
Entering the Hall, the Master asked and was told what the Brethren were talking
of together. "Yes, Brethren," said he, "and so too in days gone by Devadatta
came to just such another two-fold failure." 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 born
a Tree-Sprite, and there was a certain village where
p. 299
line-fishermen dwelt in those days. And one of these fishermen taking his tackle
went off with his little boy, and cast his hook into the most likely waters
known to his fellow-fishermen. Now [483] a snag caught his hook and the
fisherman could not pull it up. "What a fine fish!" thought he. "I'd better send
my boy off home to my wife and tell her to get up a quarrel and keep the others
at home, so that there'll be none to want to go shares in my prize." Accordingly
he told the lad to run off home and tell his mother what a big fish he had
hooked and how she was to engage the neighbours' attention. Then, fearing his
line might break, he flung off his coat and dashed into the water to secure his
prize. But as he groped about for the fish, he struck against the snag and put
out both his eyes. Moreover a robber stole his clothes from the hank. In an
agony of pain, with his hands pressed to his blinded eyes, he clambered out
trembling in every limb and tried to find his clothes.
Meantime his wife, to occupy the neighbours by a quarrel on purpose, had tricked
herself out with a palm-leaf behind one ear, and had blacked one eye with soot
from the saucepan. In this guise, nursing a dog, she came out to call on her
neighbours. "Bless me, you've gone mad," said one woman to her. "Not mad at
all," retorted the fisherman's wife; "you abuse me without cause with your
slanderous tongue. Come your ways with me to the zemindar and I'll have you
fined eight pieces 1 for slander."
So with angry words they went off to the zemindar. But when the matter was gone
into, it was the fisherman's wife who was fined; and she was tied up and beaten
to make her pay the fine. Now when the Tree-Sprite saw how misfortune had
befallen both the wife in the village and the husband in the forest, he stood in
the fork of his tree and exclaimed, "Ah fisherman, both in the water and on land
thy labour is in vain, and twofold is thy failure." So saying he uttered this
stanza:--
His blinding, and her beating, clearly show
A twofold failure and a twofold woe 2.
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[484] His lesson ended, the Master identified the Birth by saying, "Devadatta
was the fisherman of those days, and I the Tree-Sprite."
Footnotes
299:1 The Pāli word here, as in No. 137, is kahāpaṇa. But there it is shewn by
the context to be a golden coin; whereas here the poverty of the fisher-folk
supports the view that the coin was of copper, as commonly. The fact seems to be
that the word kahāpaṇa, like some other names of Indian coins, primarily
indicated a weight of any coined metal,--whether gold, silver or copper.
299:2 Cf. Dhammapada, page 147.
Next: No. 140. Kāka-Jātaka
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