Rohanta-Miga Jātaka

The Buddha related this story at the Bamboo Grove concerning his disciple Ānanda, who had once stepped forward to risk his own life for the Buddha's sake. "This is not the first time," the Buddha told the monks, "that Ānanda has laid down his life for me; he has done it before." No. 501 of the Jātakatthavaṇṇanā (the classical Pali commentary on the Jataka tales), the Rohanta-Miga Jātaka, is the ancient tale he then recounted.

In a former life, the Bodhisatta was born as Rohanta, a golden stag who ruled over a herd of eighty thousand deer beside a lake in the Himalayan foothills that bore his own name. His coat shone like beaten gold, and under his leadership the herd grazed and drank in safety season after season.

Rohanta was no ordinary herd-leader: his own parents had grown old and blind, and he returned to them daily to see that they were fed and cared for. This duty was not incidental to the tale; it became the very argument his siblings would later use to beg for his life, since a stag who died left two blind and helpless deer with no one to sustain them.

Among the herd lived Rohanta's own brother, Cittamiga, and his sister, Sutanā, both marked with the same golden hue. They loved their elder brother deeply and would prove, when the moment came, that their devotion ran deeper than fear of the hunter's knife.

Far off in Benares, Queen Khemā dreamed of a golden deer seated as if on a throne, teaching the Dhamma in a voice of surpassing sweetness. Waking with an overwhelming longing to hear such a creature in truth, she told King Brahmadatta that she would waste away unless this dream were fulfilled.

The king summoned a skilled hunter, the son of a huntsman, and sent him into the northern wilderness with every resource needed to track down whatever creature had appeared in the queen's dream, promising him rich reward if he should succeed.

After long searching, the hunter traced the golden herd to Lake Rohanta and observed their daily path to drink. There he laid a strong, concealed leather snare at the water's edge, exactly where Rohanta always led his herd to come down and drink.

Leading his herd as always, Rohanta stepped into the hidden snare. He understood at once what had happened, yet he reasoned that if he cried out the alarm call of capture, the whole terrified herd would flee without drinking, trampling the weak in their panic. So he stood calm and pretended to drink freely, straining secretly against the snare until skin, flesh, and sinew were cut and strained, and only once every last deer had drunk safely and withdrawn did he finally raise the true cry of capture.

At the cry, the herd scattered into the crags, but Cittamiga alone turned back toward the danger rather than away from it. Finding his brother held fast, he refused every plea to save himself, choosing to remain at Rohanta's side and face the approaching hunter together.

Sutanā at first fled with the rest of the herd, but could not keep running. She turned back toward the snare and declared to her brothers that she would rather lose her own life than leave Rohanta captured and alone, reminding them both that their blind parents depended on all three of them for care.

The hunter arrived prepared to kill, but found not a frightened beast but three golden deer standing together, speaking of their blind parents and offering their own lives in exchange for Rohanta's. No creature he had ever hunted had shown him such devotion, and his resolve broke. He cut the snare, freed Rohanta, and let all three go unharmed.

In gratitude, Rohanta plucked golden hairs from his own body as proof of the meeting and taught the hunter ten verses on the holy life and the five virtues, so that the hunter himself, not Rohanta, could carry the Dhamma back to the royal court. The hunter returned to Benares and recited those verses before King Brahmadatta and Queen Khemā exactly as he had been taught.

Pleased beyond measure, the king rewarded the hunter richly with jewels and gold, but the hunter, moved by what he had witnessed, asked instead to leave worldly life and become an ascetic, which the king granted. The Buddha closed the tale by revealing the identities behind it: Ānanda (his own cousin and closest attendant) had been Cittamiga, Channa (his former charioteer) had been the hunter, Sāriputta (one of his two chief disciples) had been the king, and he himself had been Rohanta.

The Rohanta-Miga Jātaka endures as one of the canon's most tender teachings on loyalty that asks nothing in return: a brother who turns back toward danger, a sister who cannot keep running from a sibling in need, and a hunter whose trade is undone not by force but by witnessing devotion he had never imagined possible in the animals he was sent to capture.