Kakati Jataka

This tale, recorded as Jataka No. 327 in the Jatakatthavannana of the Pali Canon, was told by the Buddha at Jetavana. A monk had grown discontented with monastic life because of a sinful passion that still troubled him. The Buddha told him plainly that a woman's fidelity cannot be guaranteed by any guard set over her, however careful. He then related this older story to show what even a king must accept.

In Benares, under King Brahmadatta's line, the Bodhisatta himself ruled as king, with the lovely Kakati as his chief queen. A Garuda king, one of the great bird-spirits of ancient Indian legend, took on human form. He came often to the palace to play dice with the king, never once suspected for what he truly was, however long their games went on.

Enchanted by Queen Kakati's beauty, the Garuda abducted her and carried her far away across the ocean to the dwelling of his own kind, leaving the king to grieve her sudden and inexplicable disappearance.

The king turned to his court musician, Natakuvera, and sent him to find the queen, whatever the difficulty of the search might prove to be. Natakuvera eventually came upon the Garuda king himself, resting unguarded on a bed of eraka grass (a tall reed-like grass) beside a certain quiet lake far from the city.

Seeing his chance, Natakuvera settled himself in the midst of the great bird's plumage without being noticed, and in this way was carried across seven oceans to the distant Simbali grove where the Garuda made his home, the very place where Queen Kakati was being kept.

Once there, Natakuvera found Kakati and spoke with her. He learned all he needed to know of her circumstances and of the grove where she now lived, far from everything she had known. When the time came to return, he once again hid among the Garuda's feathers, riding upon the great bird's wing all the way back to Benares undetected.

When the Garuda king next came to play dice, Natakuvera took up his lute, stood before the two of them, and sang a verse that spoke, with unmistakable intimacy, of the distant grove and of the queen who waited there.

Startled, the Garuda demanded to know how the musician could possibly have crossed seven oceans to reach the Simbali grove. Natakuvera's answer made plain exactly how he had done it. In that instant the Garuda understood the absurdity of his own position: he himself had carried his rival's messenger to his secret hiding place and back again.

Struck by the folly of it, the Garuda declared, in effect, what a blunder he had made. Lovers are best kept apart, he said, yet he himself had served as nothing more than a go-between, ferrying word of the queen back to the very court he meant to keep her from.

The Buddha closed the tale by naming who the two central figures had been. The discontented monk, brooding over his own unruly passion, had once been Natakuvera, the clever musician. The Buddha himself had been the king who waited, and whose patience in trusting a wiser course was rewarded in the end.

The Kakati Jataka endures as a frank acknowledgment that no wall, guard, or secrecy can fully secure what desire is determined to reach. The same cleverness used to steal something away can just as easily be turned to recover it. The Garuda's shame at his own foolishness, rather than any battle or punishment, is what finally restored the queen, and the Buddha used that same unflinching honesty to speak to the monk's own struggle. A vow is kept not by walls around temptation, the story suggests, but by seeing as clearly as the Garuda did how little real peace comes from what is taken rather than given freely.