Susumāra Jātaka

The Pali Canon's Sumsumara Jataka, No. 208, recorded in the Jataka commentary J.ii (159), was told by the Buddha concerning Devadatta's repeated attempts to kill him. To show how far back such treachery actually reached, the Buddha recalled an old life in which a crocodile had once tried to deceive a monkey to death for the very same reasons that would later drive Devadatta.

In ancient times, when King Brahmadatta ruled in Varanasi, the Bodhisatta (the Buddha-to-be, in an earlier life) was reborn as a vigorous, intelligent monkey dwelling in a rose-apple tree on the banks of the sacred Ganges. Across the river lay an emerald islet laden with sweet mangoes, jackfruits, and figs, visible every day but never reached.

In the deep water beneath that same stretch of river lived a crocodile with his pregnant mate. Watching the noble monkey leap with effortless grace from branch to branch, the female crocodile was seized by a fierce craving. She declared to her mate that she must eat the tender heart of that very monkey, or she would perish along with their unborn offspring.

Desperate to satisfy his wife, the male crocodile swam to the foot of the jambu tree (the same rose-apple tree) and called up to the monkey, asking why he confined himself to a single tree when an island of ripe fruit lay just across the current. He offered to ferry him there safely on his own back.

Trusting the friendly offer, the monkey leaped onto the crocodile's broad back without hesitation, and the crocodile set out across the wide river as though nothing were amiss, carrying his unsuspecting passenger steadily toward the middle of the current.

Partway across, the crocodile began diving beneath the surface, and when the sputtering monkey cried out asking why he was being submerged, the crocodile confessed triumphantly that he cared nothing for fruit at all. His pregnant wife hungered for a fresh monkey heart, and he intended to drown his passenger that very day to cut it out.

Rather than panic, the Bodhisatta retained complete composure and presence of mind, and answered with a cheerful laugh, asking why the crocodile had not simply mentioned this before they set out at all, since the arrangement could easily have been managed from the start.

The monkey explained that forest monkeys never carry their fragile hearts inside their bellies when leaping from branch to branch, since the hearts would shatter to pieces with every jump. Instead, he claimed, monkeys suspend their hearts safely on the boughs of the cluster-fig trees along the shore. He pointed to the red figs hanging in the distance as proof, offering to pluck down the sweetest one for the crocodile's wife if only he were carried back to the bank.

Believing every word, the gullible crocodile turned about and swam eagerly back toward the bank, eager to finally satisfy his wife's craving. The instant his snout touched the shore, the monkey sprang like an arrow into the high branches of a towering tree, well beyond any reach the crocodile could still manage.

Looking down from his secure perch, the Bodhisatta mocked the outwitted predator, asking whether he truly imagined that any creature's heart could hang outside its own body. He observed that the crocodile's body was immense while his intellect remained as barren as empty river foam. The crocodile sank back into the depths in shame, having lost both his meal and his dignity in the same afternoon.

At the story's end, the Buddha identified the deceitful crocodile with Devadatta, the crocodile's scheming wife with Cinca Manavika (a figure later associated with schemes against the Buddha), and the quick-witted monkey with himself. The same hunger for another's destruction that had once driven a crocodile to feign friendship on a riverbank was the very pattern Devadatta was still repeating against the Buddha life after life.

What ultimately saved the monkey was never strength, since he had none to match a crocodile's jaws, but the plain refusal to let fear override clear thinking at the exact moment clear thinking mattered most. A frightened mind rushing to escape would have thrashed uselessly in the crocodile's grip. A composed one found, in the space of a single breath, an excuse so outlandish that only total trust in a supposed friend could have made the crocodile believe it at all.

The crocodile never paused to ask whether a monkey's heart could really hang from a tree limb, because his wife's craving and his own eagerness to satisfy it had already crowded out the simple skepticism that should have caught the lie immediately. Treachery undertaken in haste, driven by appetite rather than patience, tends to overlook exactly the kind of obvious flaw that calm reflection would have caught at once. It was that same impatience, repeated across lifetimes, that the Buddha pointed to in naming Devadatta as the crocodile reborn.