Parantapa Jātaka

In ancient days, when Brahmadatta reigned in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born as the son of his chief queen. Sent to study at Takkasila, he mastered every art taught there. With it came a rare and singular accomplishment: a spell granting him power to understand the cries and speech of every bird and beast. When his schooling was done he returned to Benares, and his father made him viceroy. Yet strangely, instead of taking pride in so gifted a son, the king grew fearful and resentful of him, and would not even receive him at court.

One night a mother jackal led her hungry cubs into the city through a sewer. Passing beneath the viceroy's own window, she found a traveler asleep with his shoes set on the floor beside him. She whispered to her cubs in the speech of jackals that once he slept soundly she would steal the shoes for their supper. By virtue of his spell, the Bodhisatta understood every word. He leaned from the window and warned the traveler to put his shoes safely away, and the jackal went hungry and furious.

Some nights later she came again, and found a drunken man drowned in the palace tank, his garments and gold ring still on him. Again she promised her cubs this feast, and again the Bodhisatta overheard. He had the dead man's property removed and his body sunk out of reach. Twice thwarted, the jackal turned on the prince in bitter rage. Within three days, she swore, an enemy king would besiege the city. His own father would send him out to be killed, and she herself would drink the blood of his severed neck.

On the third day a hostile king did indeed surround the city, and Brahmadatta commanded his son to go out and fight him. The prince obeyed, though he feared the jackal's curse might yet be fulfilled. Instead of meeting the enemy at the gate where he was expected, he led his men out by another way, and the whole city, trusting in him, streamed out after him. Seeing himself abandoned and the enemy on every side, the old king despaired for his life. Taking only his chief queen, his family priest, and a single attendant named Parantapa, the figure for whom this Jātaka takes its name, he fled by night in disguise and took refuge deep in the forest. The Bodhisatta, learning of his father's flight, turned back, broke the siege, and took the throne of Benares for himself.

In the forest the exiled king built a hut of leaves on a riverbank and lived on wild fruit, going out each day with his priest to gather it. Parantapa remained behind to watch over the queen, who was then carrying the king's child. Left so often alone together, the queen and the attendant fell into a secret liaison. In time, fearing what would happen if the king ever learned of it, she pressed Parantapa to kill him. She told him how it should be done: the king always had Parantapa carry his sword and bathing-cloth down to the river. There, with the king off his guard, he should take his life and conceal the body in the forest ground.

It happened that the family priest had climbed a tree near that very bathing-place to gather fruit on the day Parantapa carried out the queen's design. From his perch he saw Parantapa seize the king and heard his cry of terror before it was cut short. In his horror the priest lost his footing and slipped noisily down through the branches. Parantapa, pausing over the work, heard the sound but found no one near, and when it was done he bathed and went his way unchallenged.

The priest crept from his hiding place still trembling. Rather than risk his own life by speaking what he had seen, he returned to the hut pretending that a serpent's breath in the forest had struck him blind. Parantapa believed him and, touched with something like pity, took over the task of gathering fruit and cared for the priest from then on.

In time the queen bore her son, in truth the murdered king's own child, though the boy grew up calling Parantapa father and knowing nothing of the past. All the while, the priest kept his secret and his grief hidden behind his feigned blindness. Only once or twice did he murmur half to himself, when he thought none could hear, of an old fear that returned to him whenever a branch stirred nearby. The queen and Parantapa took these words for mere rambling.

When the boy reached his sixteenth year, the priest led him down to the old bathing-place, opened his long-shut eyes before him, and at last told him the truth. Parantapa was no kin of his. His real father had been the king of Benares, struck down and buried on this very spot by the man he had called father, with his mother's full complicity. The priest then spent some days teaching the prince the handling of a sword.

One morning the young prince invited Parantapa to bathe with him at the river. As Parantapa waded in, the prince seized him by the topknot just as he had once seized the king, and told him plainly that the hour of reckoning for that old crime had come. The prince gave Parantapa the same end Parantapa had once dealt his father, and buried him on the same ground before washing and returning quietly to the hut. There he told the priest what he had done, rebuked his mother for her part in it, and the three of them then made their way back together to Benares.

There the Bodhisatta, who had ruled the kingdom with justice since the day of the siege, welcomed the young prince and raised him up as his own viceroy. He himself continued to govern with generosity and every other virtue, and in the end, through a life well spent, passed on toward the path of heaven.

The Teacher told this story at the Bamboo Grove to monks troubled by Devadatta's repeated attempts on his own life, which included hiring archers, rolling down a boulder, and loosing the elephant Nālāgiri. The Buddha told them that this was not the first time Devadatta had tried to kill him, and that none of those attempts had ever made him afraid. He then identified the birth: at that time, Devadatta was the old king, and he himself was the young viceroy.

The Parantapa Jātaka is canonical story No. 416, found in the third volume of the Pali Jātaka collection within the Khuddaka Nikāya of the Pali Canon. Even a father's fear and a trusted servant's betrayal, the story shows, could not touch one who met them without hatred. The ill will that drove the old king to banish his own son brought him only to ruin and grief in the forest. The same hatred would bring Devadatta himself to ruin, birth after birth, in his own repeated attempts against the Buddha.