Naḷapāna Jātaka

This story is recorded as Jataka No. 20 in the Ekanipata, the first book of the Pali Jataka collection, closing the Silavagga, the chapter on virtue that gathers Jatakas 11 through 20, its prose preserved in the Jatakatthavannana (the traditional commentary that narrates the story around each Jataka's verses). In a vast and trackless forest, the Bodhisatta was once reborn as the leader of a troop of eighty thousand monkeys. He was gigantic in stature, upright in conduct, and blessed with penetrating discernment. Long before this particular day, he had already established a standing rule among his troop: never eat unfamiliar fruit or drink from an unfamiliar water source without his own inspection first, a discipline that this story shows paying off exactly as intended. Leading eighty thousand followers through unfamiliar terrain left no room for individual monkeys to test danger on their own initiative; the rule existed precisely so that one leader's caution could stand in for the judgment of every follower at once.

One blazing summer afternoon, having wandered far across arid wastes, the entire troop suffered intensely from agonizing thirst. Searching the wilderness, they finally came upon a broad, placid lake bordered by luxuriant groves of green reeds. Eager to quench their burning throats, the monkeys prepared to plunge headlong into the water. But their wise leader held them back with an authoritative command: "Wait! This wilderness is treacherous. Do not touch this water until I examine the perimeter."

Walking carefully around the entire shore of the lake, the Bodhisatta observed many footprints of men, antelopes, and wild cattle leading down the sandy bank straight into the water, yet not a single footprint returned out of the lake. Realizing that the pool was guarded by a deadly, flesh-eating water demon, an Udaka-Rakkhasa, he warned the monkeys to keep their feet entirely on dry land. No demon had shown itself yet, no growl or shadow beneath the surface, only the silent, undeniable evidence of tracks that told a story anyone willing to look closely enough could read for themselves.

Frustrated that his trap was foiled, the dreadful ogre erupted from the dark surface of the lake. His body was monstrous, with blue skin, a crimson belly, white fangs, and eyes blazing like coals. He bellowed in fury: "Why do you sit parched upon the shore? Come down and drink! Whoever steps into my water belongs to me!" Its voice carried across the water with the same confidence that had drowned every other creature the lake had ever claimed, certain that thirst alone would eventually bring even the most cautious visitor within reach.

The Bodhisatta calmly replied: "O demon, we shall drink our fill, yet not a single one of my followers shall become your prey." The Bodhisatta selected a sturdy reed and blew through it, and by the power of his resolve it cleared of every internal knot so that it became a perfectly hollow straw. At his command, all eighty thousand monkeys took reeds, knelt safely on the dry bank, dipped the tubes into the water, and drank until satisfied. Outwitted and powerless on dry land, the furious demon slunk back into the watery abyss. The demon's power had always depended entirely on drawing prey into his own element; stripped of that single condition, eighty thousand monkeys drank in full view of him without a single casualty, and his threats dissolved into empty noise.

The Jatakatthavannana adds that the reeds growing around this lake, called Nalakapana ever after, remained hollow from that day onward, a detail meant to explain, in the manner many Jatakas use to close their tales, why a particular feature of the natural world looks the way it still does. The Bodhisatta's solution is remembered in Buddhist tradition as a model of Upaya Kosalla, skillful means, and of the inductive reasoning that first exposed the danger: a single observation, footprints leading only one direction, was enough to save eighty thousand lives before a single monkey set foot near the water. The story is told, like many in the Silavagga, to illustrate that virtue and vigilance together outmatch brute danger more reliably than courage alone ever could, a lesson the commentary applies just as readily to a monk facing temptation as to a monkey king facing a lake.