Kapota Jātaka

In ancient times, when King Brahmadatta ruled Varanasi, the Bodhisatta was reborn as a gentle, virtuous pigeon endowed with great wisdom and contented serenity. A rich merchant's cook, admiring the pigeon's quiet elegance, wove a cozy wicker nesting-basket, lined it with soft straw, and hung it beneath the rafters of the merchant's kitchen, providing the bird with water and leaving the kitchen window open so it could fly out to the forest at dawn to feed on wild grass seeds.

One day, a scruffy, gluttonous crow smelled the intoxicating aroma of roast fish and rich spiced meats wafting from the kitchen. Salivating with greed, the crow spied the well-fed pigeon flying gracefully into the kitchen window. Scheming to gain access to the meats prepared for the merchant's table, the crow approached the Bodhisatta with hypocritical flattery, praising his beauty and begging to become his companion and disciple. The wise pigeon immediately discerned the crow's treacherous appetite and warned him: 'Friend, our natures and diets are utterly dissimilar. Pigeons sustain life on seeds and grains, dwelling peacefully without theft. Crows crave meat and scavenge through violence and stealth. He who enters another's kitchen out of gluttony plays with fire and courts gruesome destruction.'

The crow pretended to accept the pigeon's holy guidance, but the following morning, when the Bodhisatta prepared to fly out to the meadows to forage, the crow feigned severe bellyache, groaning: 'Alas, brother! A sharp cramp grips my bowels; fly ahead to the fields, and let me rest in the warm basket.' The Bodhisatta warned him once more: 'Beware! Do not let thy belly be thy executioner!' As soon as the pigeon disappeared into the sky, the cook placed a steaming pot of spiced meat onto the sideboard and stepped into the pantry for herbs.

Seizing his moment, the ravenous crow plummeted from the rafters, plunged his beak into the boiling vessel, and attempted to drag out a massive chunk of fish and meat. In his haste, he knocked the heavy lid with a deafening crash. Alerted by the din, the cook rushed in, slammed the door shut, and grabbed the squawking bird. In blistering fury at the spoiled meal, the cook plucked every single feather from the crow's wings, tail, and body until its pink skin was entirely bare.

Then, grinding moist ginger and white mustard, and pounding the paste together with a rotten date, the cook rubbed the stinging mixture into every pore of the screaming crow's bared skin with a potsherd, wounding him afresh with each stroke. Finally he bound a second potsherd around the bird's neck with a cord, flung him back into the basket, and left him to his agony.

When the Bodhisatta returned at dusk, he found his foolish companion writhing in torment, shivering in pools of blood and brine. With sorrowful detachment, the Bodhisatta uttered solemn stanzas, reproving him: birds should be careful to avoid the food they see by man enjoyed, for the heedless fool who rejects the timely counsel of a true friend and succumbs to the tyranny of his palate must inevitably reap agonizing torment, even as this wretched crow lies plucked and pickled in his own folly. Noting that evil habits, once indulged, are bitterly hard to set down even at the cost of life, the Bodhisatta spread his wings and flew away to the tranquil forest. The crow, unable to rise under the weight of his wounds and his own gluttony, died where he lay in the basket.

This tale is preserved in the Pali Canon's Khuddaka Nikāya, in the Jātaka book's Pañcanipāta, as the Kapota-Jātaka, No. 375 — the closing tale of that fifth book of five-verse stories. It shares its name and its central pair of characters with a shorter, independent Jātaka earlier in the collection, No. 42, in which the same contented pigeon and the same greedy crow appear in the kitchen of a different household; the two are related in theme but are distinct canonical texts, each with its own five or six verses and its own telling of the crow's ruin.