Abbhantara Jātaka

The Master told this story while residing at Jetavana. Rahula's mother, now a nun at Savatthi, was troubled by flatulence, and her son, the novice Rahula, asked his preceptor, the Elder Sariputta, to find mango juice with sugar for her. Sariputta was a guest of the king of Kosala, who had ripe mangoes brought and sweetened and crushed them himself, filling the Elder's bowl. The juice cured her, and the king afterward sent mango syrup to the nun regularly. When the monks spoke of this in the Dhamma Hall, the Buddha said it was not the first time Rahula's mother had been helped with mango, and he told a far older tale. Jataka No. 281 of the Pali Canon records it under this telling.

In a distant age, when Brahmadatta ruled Benares, the Bodhisatta was born a brahmin in a village of Kasi. After his parents died he became an ascetic in the Himalayas, where many sages gathered around him, and later he came down to Benares for salt and seasoning and stayed in the king's park. The virtue of these ascetics shook the palace of Sakka, lord of the devas, who resolved to disturb them. At midnight he appeared to the chief queen and spoke two verses about a divine Abbhantara mango, the fruit that would give a woman who ate it a son destined to become a universal monarch.

The queen feigned illness and told the king she craved a middle mango. The king's courtiers said it would be a mango growing between two others, and his men searched the park, but Sakka had made all of its fruit vanish. They reported that none was left, and the king, assuming the ascetics had taken it, had them beaten and driven out of the park. Sakka's aim was achieved, but the queen's craving remained.

The king's brahmins explained that the true middle mango was the gods' portion, growing on the Golden Mountain in the Himalayas, and that only a parrot could fetch it. The king sent for a strong and clever parrot of his household, praised and rewarded him, and sent him on his way. The parrot flew over seven mountain ranges, asking the parrots of each in turn, until those of the seventh told him where the tree grew.

The tree was guarded by iron nets and by Kumbhanda guardians. The parrot slipped in at night, but the iron nets rang and he was caught. The guardians discussed various ways to kill him, but he calmly told them that he served his king, and that one who gives his life for his master goes to heaven. Moved, they released him, though they said they could not give fruit from the guarded tree. They directed him to the ascetic Jotirasa, who lived in a leaf hut called Kancanapatti and received four fruits from Vessavana each time.

Jotirasa gave the parrot one fruit to eat and hung a second around his neck for the king. The parrot brought it back to the queen. She ate it and her craving was satisfied, but she still did not conceive a son.

When the Buddha had finished the story, he revealed the identities behind it. Rahula's mother had been the queen in that age; Ananda had been the parrot; Sariputta had been the ascetic who gave the mango; and the Bodhisatta had been the ascetic who lived in the park.

The frame and the past-life story mirror each other: in both, Sariputta is the one who procures mango for a woman connected to Rahula, and Ananda and Rahula's mother appear in both. The Buddha's teaching rests less on the parrot's courage alone than on this long continuity, showing how a single act of kindness between two beings can resurface, lifetime after lifetime, as the same bond expressed in a new form.

What makes the Bodhisatta's own part in the story distinct from the parrot's is that it was not courage against danger but the experience of injustice. He was driven from the very park where he had lived in blameless virtue, over a disappearance that Sakka alone had arranged. The parrot's perfection lay in risking death for the sake of his master, and the ascetics, who had done nothing, bore the king's mistaken anger.