Sālikedāra Jātaka

The Buddha told this story at Jetavana about a monk who continued to support his aging mother out of his own almsfood, a practice some brothers questioned as improper for one who had renounced the household life. The Buddha defended him, saying that even animals in ages past had cared for their parents, and he recounted this tale, preserved today as Jātaka No. 484 in the Pakiṇṇakanipāta of the Khuddaka Nikāya's Jātaka collection, as proof.

In ancient Magadha, near the village of Sālindiya not far from Rājagaha, lived a wealthy Brahmin landowner named Kosiyagotta. He possessed an immense estate of one thousand karīsas (acres) of irrigated land sown with fine, fragrant red sāli rice. It was so vast that he hired a chief watchman to oversee five hundred acres directly and left local laborers to supervise the rest.

North of the estate stood a silk-cotton forest where a great flock of parrots made their home. They were led by the Bodhisatta, born among them as a large and powerful parrot king. When his own father grew old and could no longer lead the flock, the Bodhisatta took up the leadership, but he never let his aged parents forage for themselves. Each day he flew alone to distant Himalayan hills, ate his fill of wild rice there, and carried food home in his beak for them.

One day, members of the flock reported that the rice in Kosiya's fields had ripened. The parrot king led the entire flock there to feed, and when the others had eaten their fill and flown off, he alone lingered to gather a generous portion of grain in his beak before carrying it home to his parents.

The chief watchman noticed that this one parrot, unlike all the rest, carried grain away every single day, and reported the pattern to his master. Kosiya, intrigued rather than angry, ordered the bird snared unharmed rather than killed. The watchman set a delicate horsehair noose at the very stalk the parrot king favored, and the following morning it closed about his foot.

The watchman carried the captured bird before Kosiya, who studied the handsome, captive parrot and demanded an explanation: 'Is your stomach larger than other parrots', or do you bear some old grudge against me, that you alone carry off my grain day after day?'

The parrot king answered in a voice of refined melody. In verses that have since become justly famous, he explained the threefold way he put his harvest to use. One portion, he said, he lent to his own helpless young chicks, who could not yet forage for themselves. He trusted that they would support him when he grew old in turn, just as a loan is given expecting future repayment. Another portion he paid as an old debt to his blind and aging parents, who had nurtured him in his own helpless infancy. And a third he gave away freely as charity to other weak and helpless birds of the forest who had none to care for them: this, the wise call a store laid up.

Hearing this clear accounting of filial debt, provision for the young, and charity to the helpless, Kosiya was moved to tears. He personally loosened the snare from the parrot king's foot, bathed him, fed him rice and honey from his own hand, and declared: 'Noble king of birds, take this thousand-acre field and eat of it freely.' But the parrot king refused the whole estate and asked only for eight acres. The Brahmin set up boundary stones and made that portion over to him and his kindred.

The parrot king accepted the eight acres, flew home to share both the food and the joyful news with his aged parents, and under his guidance Kosiya himself took up the five precepts and a life of greater generosity, remembering always the bird that had taught him the true meaning of a debt repaid.

At the story's end, the Buddha identified the birth for the monk who supported his mother: the parrot king who cared so faithfully for his parents was the Buddha himself in that former life; his parrot parents were the parents of that very monk; the Brahmin landowner Kosiyagotta was the Elder Ānanda; and the watchman who set the snare was the Elder Channa.