Matakabhatta Jātaka

The Master told this story at Jetavana about Feasts for the Dead. At that time people were offering goats, sheep, and other animals as a feast for their departed kinsmen. The monks saw this and asked the Master whether any good could come of it. The Jātaka Aṭṭhakathā of the Pali Canon records the story as No. 18, the Matakabhatta Jātaka.

The Master said that no good arises, even when a life is taken to provide a Feast for the Dead. He recalled that in bygone days the wise had taught the truth from mid-air, shown the evil results of the practice, and made the whole continent give it up. Now their previous lives had grown confused in people's minds, and the practice had sprung up again. With these words he told a story of the past.

Once, when Brahmadatta reigned in Benares, a brahmin who was versed in the three Vedas and renowned as a teacher decided to offer a Feast for the Dead. He had a goat fetched and told his pupils to take it to the river. They were to bathe it, hang a garland around its neck, give it a pottle of grain, groom it, and bring it back. The pupils did as they were told.

At the river the pupils bathed the goat and groomed it, and set it on the bank. The goat became aware of the deeds of its past lives. It was overjoyed to think that on this very day it would be freed from all its misery, and it laughed aloud like the smashing of a pot.

Then the goat thought that the brahmin, by killing it, would take on the same misery it had borne. It felt great compassion for him and wept with a loud voice. The young brahmins said that its voice had been loud both in laughter and in weeping, and asked why it had laughed and why it had wept. The goat told them to ask its question before their master.

The pupils brought the goat to their master, and the brahmin asked it the same question. By its power of remembering former lives, the goat answered him. In times past, it said, it had been a brahmin versed in the Vedas like him. To offer a Feast for the Dead, it had killed a goat. Because of that one act, it had lost its head five hundred times, all but one. This was its five hundredth and last birth, and it had laughed to think it would be freed that very day.

The goat said that it wept when it thought of the brahmin. For killing a goat it had been doomed to suffer five hundred times, and it was about to be free. The brahmin, as a penalty for killing it, would be doomed to suffer the same fate five hundred times. It wept out of compassion for him.

The brahmin told the goat not to fear, for he would not kill it. The goat said that whether he killed it or not, it could not escape death that day. The brahmin said that he would go about with it and guard it. The goat answered that his protection was weak and the force of its evil deed was strong. The brahmin freed the goat and told his disciples not to let anyone kill it, and he followed the animal closely with the young men.

As soon as it was free, the goat stretched its neck to browse on the leaves of a bush growing near the top of a rock. At that very instant a thunderbolt struck the rock. A mass of stone broke away and fell upon the goat, ending its life. People came crowding round.

In those days the Bodhisatta had been born as a tree spirit at that very place. By his supernatural power, he seated himself cross-legged in mid-air, while the whole crowd watched. He thought that if these creatures only knew the fruit of evil-doing, they might stop killing. In his sweet voice he taught them a stanza. It says that if folk knew the penalty would be a birth into sorrow, living things would cease from taking life, for stern is the slayer's doom.

The Great Being thus preached the truth and made his hearers fear the results of such deeds. The people were so moved that they left off taking life. The Bodhisatta established the multitude in the Commandments and passed away to fare according to his deeds. The people remained steadfast in his teaching, spent their lives in charity and other good works, and in the end thronged the city of the Devas (the heavenly gods).

When his lesson was ended, the Master showed the connexion and identified the birth. In those days, he said, he himself had been the tree spirit.

The story does not scorn the brahmin, who was ready to listen and willing to spare the goat. It shows how an act done for the departed can cause the doer harm, and how fear of that harm can lead a whole community to turn aside from killing. The laugh and the tears belong to one creature in one moment, for relief at its own release and compassion for the man who had meant to cause its death. It is that compassion which gives the tale its lasting force. Those who honour their dead are asked to do so by gifts and good works, and not by taking life.