Ghaṭa Jātaka

In ancient days, in the splendid coastal city of Dvaravati, there reigned the Ten Royal Brothers (the Andhaka-Venhu princes), of whom the eldest was King Kaṇha (Krishna-Vasudeva) and the most spiritually gifted was Prince Ghaṭapaṇḍita (the Bodhisatta). Through united fraternal power and wisdom, the ten brothers had subdued all rivals and governed their vast maritime empire in sovereign peace.

In the course of time, King Kaṇha's beloved young son—a prince of radiant beauty and the apple of the monarch's eye—was struck down by a sudden, fatal illness and passed away. The King was utterly unhinged by grief. Casting aside his imperial crown and royal robes, he threw himself upon the bare earth, tearing his hair, beating his breast with clenched fists, and crying out in agony: 'O my son! My heart! Return to your father! How can I live without the light of your countenance?' Days turned into weeks; the King refused food, neglected all affairs of state, and lay sobbing in his bedchamber, wasting away toward death.

The ministers and brothers attempted consolation in vain; the King merely screamed louder in grief. Seeing that his brother was plunging toward madness and bodily ruin, Prince Ghaṭapaṇḍita realized that ordinary comforting words could never pierce the thick armor of blind attachment. 'Only a dramatic, unforgettable psychological shock can shatter this paralyzing delusion,' reasoned the Bodhisatta.

Prince Ghaṭapaṇḍita immediately let down his hair, dressed in wild, disheveled garments, smeared ashes upon his brow, and rushed into the main streets of Dvaravati, wailing hysterically and staring wildly into the sky, shouting at the top of his lungs: 'Give me a hare! O citizens, catch me a hare! I cannot live without a hare!'

The townspeople were terrified, whispering that the beloved prince had lost his sanity. Word reached King Kaṇha in his palace: 'Sire! Your wise brother Ghaṭa has gone stark raving mad! He is running through the thoroughfares weeping and screaming for a hare!' The shock of hearing that his beloved brother was deranged penetrated the King's stupor. Shaking off his lethargy, King Kaṇha sprang up, ran out to the city square, caught Ghaṭa by the shoulders, and said tenderly: 'Ghaṭa, my dearest brother, compose yourself! You are renowned as the wisest sage of our dynasty! Why do you run weeping for a hare? I am sovereign of Dvaravati! My royal huntsmen shall scour the dense jungles and bring you thousands of hares—golden hares, silver hares, spotted hares, or mountain hares! Whatever beast you desire shall be yours!'

Ghaṭapaṇḍita shook his head violently, pointed his finger toward the radiant full moon blazing in the velvet night sky, and wept: 'Brother, I desire no earthly jungle hare! I want the hare that dwells in the moon! Climb up to the heavens, reach your hand into the moon, pull out the celestial hare, and give it to me! If you cannot give me the hare in the moon, I shall weep until I die!'

King Kaṇha stared in disbelief, then said sternly: 'Brother, your grief has destroyed your wits! The moon travels in the far firmament beyond the reach of birds and devas. No mortal can ever touch the moon or extract a beast from its disk! You are weeping for that which can never be obtained!'

At that precise instant, Prince Ghaṭapaṇḍita dropped his pretense of madness. Standing tall, his eyes blazing with transcendental wisdom, he spoke in a voice of majestic thunder: 'O King Kaṇha! You call me a madman because I weep for the hare in the moon. But look upon the moon: it shines visibly in the heavens every night; its shape can be seen by every child; it is a real, existing orb in the sky! But you, O mighty monarch—you weep day and night for your dead son! His body has been burned to ash upon the pyre; his spirit has migrated to another realm; his earthly form has vanished into absolute nothingness! He can never be seen, touched, or returned to this world by any power in the universe! Tell me, brother: between the two of us, who is the greater fool? Who is the true madman—the one who weeps for what visibly exists in the sky, or the one who weeps for a corpse that has dissolved into smoke?'

The King stood petrified as the words struck his soul like a divine bolt of lightning. The scales of delusion fell from his eyes; the fog of irrational bereavement cleared instantly. King Kaṇha took a deep breath, wiped the tears from his cheeks, and bowed deeply before his younger brother, declaring: 'O Ghaṭa, truly you are the supreme physician of the soul! As a man extinguishes a roaring house fire with a torrent of cool water, so have your luminous words extinguished the scorching flames of grief in my breast. You have drawn out the poisoned arrow of sorrow from my heart!'

King Kaṇha bathed, resumed his royal ornaments, and returned to his throne, governing Dvaravati with justice, wisdom, and tranquility, while Prince Ghaṭapaṇḍita continued to illuminate the kingdom with the noble Dhamma.

This account is preserved in the Pali Canon's Khuddaka Nikāya, in the Jātaka book's Dasakanipāta (the division of tales told in ten verses), as the Ghaṭa-Jātaka, No. 454. At its close the Buddha identified the birth: the courtier Rohiṇeyya, who summoned the king to his stricken brother, was Ānanda in that life; the grieving King Kaṇha was Sāriputta; and the consoling Prince Ghaṭapaṇḍita was the Buddha himself.