JATAKAS

Jatakas

Jatakas

Introduction

The "Jataka Tales," or Birth-stories of the life of Buddha in his previous existences before becoming the Enlightened One, forms a body of fable literature that is recognized to be of great importance to folklorists. More than five hundred of these stories have been handed down from over two thousand years ago in Pali, the sacred language of the Buddhists; and, besides serving to point a moral or adorn a tale connected with the Blessed One's life and teachings; they contain a mass of material that is of special interest to the student of folklore.

Discussion

Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was ruling in Varanasi, a festival was proclaimed in the city. The king's gardener wanted to go and join the festivities, so he asked a troop of monkeys who lived in the garden to look after the plants while he was away. Aware of the benefits they had from living in the palace garden, the monkey-king happily agreed that they would do so. The monkeys set about watering the young trees. 'But be careful not to waste the water!' warned the monkey-king. So they first pulled up the plants and measured the roots, in order to ascertain how much water each plant needed. A wise man was passing and commented (in verse), “Assistance from a fool does not lead to happiness: A fool fails, just like the monkey gardener”.

Taken as a simple story, we might learn from this that we shouldn't associate with fools, and that we certainly shouldn't allow monkeys to do our gardening. However, this story is not just a story, it is the forty-sixth jataka of the Jatakatthavannana (henceforth JA), the semi-canonical jataka collection of the Theravada school of Buddhism. So, we might ask, what difference does it make to the story to identify it as a jataka? What exactly is a jataka?

The story of the monkey gardeners is illustrated at one of the earliest Buddhist sites, the stupa of Bharhut in Central India. The stone relief from around the first century BCE shows a wise man observing two monkeys, one of whom is inspecting the roots of a tree whilst the other carries water pots. Similar illustrations are found in South and Southeast Asian temples, cartoons and children's books. In some of these depictions, a halo or golden skin indicates the special status of the wise observer, for he is identified as the Buddha in a previous life. The presence of the Buddha or, as he is called before his awakening, the Bodhisatta, is the key criterion for identifying a story as jataka. Simply defined, a jataka is a story relating an episode in a past birth of the Buddha.

Jatakas defined in this manner are found scattered throughout the texts of the early Buddhist schools as well as in commentaries and later compositions and compilations. The term is often used to refer specifically to the JA as this is the largest and most prominent collection, yet several other jataka collections exist both within and outside ...