Kāsāva Jātaka

The Buddha told this story at Jetavana about Devadatta. It began with something that happened at Rājagaha. At one period the Captain of the Faith, Sāriputta, was living with five hundred monks at the Bamboo Grove. Devadatta, with a following of monks who had followed him in his schism, lived at Gayāsīsa. At that time the citizens of Rājagaha used to club together for almsgiving. A trader who had come there on business brought a magnificent perfumed yellow robe and asked to join them by giving it as his contribution.

The townspeople brought plenty of gifts, all of them in ready money. The one thing left was the robe. The crowd said, "Here is this beautiful perfumed robe left over. Who shall have it, Elder Sāriputta or Devadatta?" Some favoured Sāriputta. Others said that Sāriputta would stay a few days and then go travelling as he pleased, whereas Devadatta always lived near their city and was their refuge in good fortune or ill. They took a vote, and the majority favoured Devadatta. He had the robe cut into strips, sewn together again, and coloured like gold, and so he wore it.

At the same time, thirty monks went from Sāvatthī to pay their respects to the Master. After greetings, they told him all this. They added that Devadatta wore this mark of a saint, which suited him ill. The Buddha replied that this was not the first time Devadatta had put on the garb of a saint, a most unsuitable dress. He had done the same before. Then he told an old-world tale. It is recorded as No. 221 of the Jātaka collection.

Once, when Brahmadatta was king of Benares, the Bodhisatta (the Buddha-to-be, in this former birth) was born as an elephant in the Himalaya region. He was lord of a herd of eighty thousand wild elephants, and he dwelt in the forest land.

A poor man who lived in Benares saw the workers in the ivory bazaar making bangles and all manner of ivory trinkets. He asked them whether they would buy an elephant's tusks if he should get them. They said they would. So he took a weapon and dressed himself in a yellow robe. He took on the guise of a Pacceka-Buddha (one who has awakened alone, without a teacher, and does not go on to teach others), with a covering band about his head, and stood in the path of the elephants.

He slew one of the elephants with his weapon and sold its tusks in Benares. In this way he made a living. After this, he began always to kill the very last elephant in the Bodhisatta's troop. Day by day the elephants grew fewer. They went to the Bodhisatta and asked how it was that their numbers dwindled. He perceived the reason. He thought that some man might be standing in the place where the elephants go, made up to look like a Pacceka-Buddha, and that this man might be the slayer. He resolved to find out.

One day he sent the others on before him and followed behind. The man saw the Bodhisatta and rushed at him with his weapon. The Bodhisatta turned and stood. He thought that he would beat the man to the ground and kill him, and he stretched out his trunk. Then he saw the yellow robes the man wore. He thought that he ought to pay respect to those sacred robes. So he drew back his trunk.

The Bodhisatta cried out, asking the man whether that dress, the flag of sainthood, was not unsuitable for him, and why he wore it. He spoke two verses. If someone still full of sin dares to don the yellow robe, he said, in whom there is no care for temperance and no love of truth, he is not worthy of such a robe. But one who has cast out sin, who is firm in virtue, who is chiefly careful to control his passions and to be truthful, truly deserves to wear the yellow robe. With these words the Bodhisatta rebuked the man. He told him never to come there again, or he would die for it, and in this way drove him off.

After the discourse, the Buddha identified the Birth. Devadatta, he said, was the man who killed the elephants, and the head of the herd was himself.

The Kāsāva Jātaka, No. 221, is remembered for a verse about what makes a robe worth wearing. The elephant has taken no vows, but he honours the cloth because he knows what it stands for, and for that reason he refuses to harm the wearer. The story does not claim that robes make a person holy. It says the opposite, that the robe belongs to one whose conduct is steady and whose desires are restrained. Devadatta's acceptance of a robe was linked in the frame to the same question of fitness. A symbol of renunciation is a trust, and the person who wears it carries an obligation to live up to it. Those who see the robe should remember what it stands for, and those who wear it should deserve it.