Mahā-Kaṇha Jātaka

This Jātaka — recorded in the Jātakatthavaṇṇanā as Jataka No. 469 — was told by the Master while dwelling at Jetavana, concerning his own unbroken labor for the welfare of the world. The Brethren had been praising the Blessed One. Even after attaining supreme wisdom, he still walked many leagues to convert the capable. He taught deities and Brahmas alike. He extended compassion even to serpents and garuḷas (mythical bird-like beings). The Master answered that this was no new thing. Even in a distant past birth, while he was yet subject to passion, he had labored just as tirelessly for the good of the world. So saying, he told this story of the past.

Long ages before, in the time of the Supreme Buddha Kassapa, King Usīnara reigned in the city of Baranasi. It was long after that Buddha had declared the Four Truths, delivered multitudes from bondage, and passed into Nirvana. In the age that followed, his religion had fallen into decay. Monks earned their living by the twenty-one unlawful means and kept company with nuns, begetting sons and daughters. Monks and nuns alike abandoned the duties of the Order. Lay men and women abandoned the duties of the laity. Brahmins ceased to perform even a Brahmin's own observances. Humanity for the most part walked the ten paths of evil. The realms of suffering filled to overflowing, while the heaven of the Thirty-Three stood empty, for no new god was being born there.

Sakka, King of the Gods, marked that no new deity had arisen. Looking out over the world, he saw how mankind was falling into states of woe as the Buddha's religion decayed. 'What am I to do?' he wondered — and then resolved: 'I will terrify mankind, and when I have terrified them I will comfort them, declare the Law to them, and restore the decayed religion so that it may endure for a thousand years more.' With this resolve he took his own charioteer, the god Mātali, and transformed him into the shape of a colossal black hound of pure breed — hideous, big-bellied as a woman near her time, with four tusks as large as plantain shoots. Binding him with a five-fold chain and a red wreath, Sakka himself put on a hunter's yellow garb, bound back his hair, and took up a great bow and an adamant-tipped javelin. In this guise of a forester, he led the hound by its leash to a spot one league from the city.

Thrice Sakka cried aloud, 'The world is doomed to destruction, doomed to destruction!' The people fled in terror into Baranasi and told the king, who at once had the city gates shut fast. But Sakka leapt the eighteen-cubit wall with his hound and stood within the city. The people ran shrieking into their houses and barred the doors, while Mahā-Kaṇha, the Great Black Hound, gave chase to every man in sight before bursting into the king's own palace. The king and the women of his household fled up onto the terrace. There the hound reared up, set his forepaws upon the window, and loosed a roar so vast that it was reckoned ever after among the three loudest roars ever heard in India — a roar that shook creation from the hells to the highest heaven.

Mustering his courage, the king called down, 'Ho, huntsman! Why does your hound roar?' 'He is hungry, great king,' Sakka answered. The king had his own food brought. The hound swallowed it all in a single mouthful and roared again. The food of the elephants and horses followed, and then all the food in the city of Baranasi — and still Mahā-Kaṇha devoured it in an instant and roared once more. 'This is no hound,' the king said, trembling. 'Beyond doubt he is a spirit.' He asked the huntsman why he had come, and whom the hound would devour.

'Only my enemies, great king,' Sakka replied — 'those who love unrighteousness and walk wickedly.' When the king asked him to describe them, Sakka answered in verses that have been treasured ever since. When monks forsake the robe to till the soil. When nuns tonsured yet worldly wander abroad. When ascetics and usurers grow foul and filthy. When Brahmins sell their sacred learning for sacrifice-fees. When sons who could support their aged parents refuse them, or revile them as fools. When men pursue the wives of their teacher, their friend, their father's sister, or their uncle. When robbers take to the highway sword in hand. When the idle and quarrelsome brawl in their strength. When the false and deceitful walk the world. Against all such, Sakka declared, he would let the Black Hound loose.

Hearing this, the whole multitude, terror-struck at the thought of their own hidden faults, stood frozen in dread. Sakka saw that moral shame and moral dread (hiri and ottappa) had at last taken root in their hearts. Rather than release the hound, he held him fast by the leash. Casting off the hunter's disguise, Sakka rose blazing into the air and revealed himself: 'O great king, I am Sakka, King of the Gods! Seeing that the world was about to be destroyed, I came. Even now men are filling the realms of suffering through their evil deeds, and heaven stands empty. Hereafter I shall know how to deal with the wicked — but do you remain vigilant.' Then, in four stanzas long remembered, he declared the Law and established the people in the virtue of liberality. So he strengthened the waning religion of the Buddha Kassapa, and it endured for yet another thousand years. This done, Sakka returned with Mātali to his own heavenly abode.

When the Master had finished this discourse, he said, 'Thus, Brethren, in bygone times as now I lived for the good of the world.' And he identified the birth: Ānanda had been Mātali the charioteer, and the Bodhisatta himself had been Sakka, King of the Gods.