Sarabhamiga Jataka

The Buddha told this Jataka, No. 483 of the Pali canon, while dwelling at Jetavana. He told it in praise of the Elder Sariputta's gift for expanding a brief topic into a full and complete exposition. To illustrate how a single compressed utterance could unfold into an entire teaching, the Teacher recounted a birth in which a king's own terse verses, chanted alone at dawn, were enough for a wise listener to reconstruct the whole hidden story behind them.

In the days when Brahmadatta ruled in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born as a noble stag of the forest. The king of that era was a passionate hunter who believed himself unmatched among men in strength and skill. One day he ordered his courtiers to drive the deer of the forest toward him, warning that any man who let the quarry slip past would be punished.

When the stag — the Bodhisatta — was flushed from the thicket toward the waiting king, it moved with such natural agility, rolling, bending, and swerving at each twang of the bowstring, that every arrow went wide. The courtiers could not help laughing at the king's repeated misses. Stung by this public ridicule, the king girded his robe, took his sword in hand, and set off on foot in furious pursuit of the stag alone, running for some three leagues — roughly nine miles — deep into the forest.

The Bodhisatta knew the forest well. He sensed ahead of him a great pit, sixty cubits deep (about ninety feet) and holding some thirty cubits of water, and swerved aside from it at the last moment to pass safely around its edge. The king, however, was intent only on the fleeing stag and blind to the ground before him. He ran straight on and plunged into the hidden pit, floundering in the deep water with no foothold to save himself.

Hearing the king's cries from within the pit, the Bodhisatta did not take the chance to escape unpursued. Though this very man had been hunting him moments before, no resentment arose in the stag's heart. Moved instead by compassion for a creature in danger of drowning, he approached the edge of the pit and braced himself firmly upon the rocks at its rim. Then he reached down to draw the struggling king up out of the water to safety on solid ground.

Once the king had recovered his breath and composure, the Bodhisatta did not simply withdraw into the forest. He spoke to the king with gentle authority and established him in the Five Precepts, the basic moral virtues of right conduct that every person, king or commoner, ought to uphold. Grateful and humbled, the king in turn offered to share his kingdom with the stag who had saved his life.

The Bodhisatta refused the offer without hesitation, saying that he was but one of the animals of the forest and had no desire for a kingdom of his own. He asked only one thing in return. If the king valued what had passed between them, he should keep faithfully the precepts he had been taught, and teach his own subjects to keep them as well. With this request made, the stag returned quietly to his forest home.

Moved by all that had happened, the king returned to his city and proclaimed that his people should observe the Five Precepts. Yet he told no one the story of the pit and the rescue. Each dawn, alone with his memories, he recited to himself six verses of quiet reflection on toil, hardship, and the unexpected rewards that come to those who do not lose heart. His royal chaplain overheard these verses day after day. From their careful wording, he pieced together the entire hidden story of the chasm and the stag who had saved the king's life, though the king had never spoken of it aloud.

Some time afterward, the king came upon the very stag again within his own park and raised his bow to shoot it, forgetting for a moment the debt he owed. At once Sakka, ruler of the gods, intervened — first speaking through the chaplain's body, then appearing in his own divine form. Sakka tempted the king with the promise of becoming a king among gods if he slew his benefactor. He also threatened him with death and ruin for his whole household if he spared the stag out of gratitude. The king was unmoved by either temptation or threat. He declared that he would never raise his hand against the one who had drawn him from the pit, whatever reward or punishment might follow.

Concluding the tale, the Buddha identified the people in it with those of his own circle. Ananda was the king who fell into the pit and was rescued. Sariputta was the wise chaplain who deduced the whole story from a few overheard verses. And the Buddha himself had been the noble stag who forgave his hunter and drew him from the water.

This Jataka No. 483 endures as more than a tale of a grateful king and a merciful stag. It is the very demonstration the Buddha wished to give of Sariputta's rare gift. Just as the chaplain, hearing only six brief verses recited in private, could unfold from them the entire hidden history of the pit, the rescue, and the precepts — so too could Sariputta take the briefest statement of the Dhamma and draw out its full and complete meaning for those who needed to hear it. The stag's compassion toward the very man who hunted him, and the king's steadfast refusal to betray his rescuer even before a god, remain lasting lessons in gratitude and loving-kindness. But the frame in which the Buddha set this story points always back to a deeper lesson: wisdom that can read a whole teaching in a single word.