Ulūka Jātaka

Jataka No. 270 of the Pali Canon was told by the Buddha after he was informed that owls near Jetavana (the monastery grounds where he often stayed) were killing numerous crows night after night. To explain how this bitter enmity between the two birds had first begun, the Buddha recalled a former life in which the birds of the world had once gathered to elect a king of their own.

In the first age of the world, people chose a handsome, commanding man as their king. The four-footed animals chose a lion, and the fish chose a fish named Ānanda. The birds of the Himalayas then gathered on a flat rock. They noted that humans, beasts and fish all had kings while the birds had none, and they resolved to choose one of their own.

The assembled birds settled on the owl as their choice. A proclamation was made that a vote would be taken, and it was to be made three times before the matter was sealed.

The first announcement passed, and then the second. When the proclamation was made for the third time, a crow rose from among the assembly. He first asked the birds for leave to speak, and they granted it.

The crow spoke his objection in verse. Even now, at the moment of his anointing, he said, the owl's face was fearsome to look at, and a king who looks like this when he ought to be pleased gives the assembly cause to wonder how he will look when he is angry.

The crow pressed the point further, asking what horrors might befall the assembly once this same owl was provoked to genuine anger, if his face already looked this fearsome while supposedly at his happiest. An angry owl upon the throne, he warned, would scorch his own subjects the way sesame seeds scorch in a hot iron skillet.

The crow declared before the whole gathering that he did not want to make this fellow king, and he flew off into the sky crying out that he did not like it.

The owl flew after the crow in pursuit. From that day on, the two birds bore enmity toward one another, the crows attacking the owls by day and the owls attacking the crows by night.

The birds, having narrowly avoided an angry-tempered ruler, then chose a golden goose (hamsa) as their king, and dispersed. The Buddha identified that golden goose as the Bodhisatta, himself in an earlier life.

The text tells us only that the birds chose the goose and went their separate ways, and it says nothing more about his reign. What it does preserve is the contrast with the choice they had so nearly made: a gentle, golden bird in place of one whose very face announced his temper. Seen this way, the story invites the listener to ask the crow's question of any who seek authority: not only what they promise, but what their bearing already shows, and whether those who must live under their rule would be safe if that bearing turned to anger.

What the crow's single honest objection proved was never that appearances tell the whole truth about character, but that a visible warning sign, however small, deserves examination before power is handed over rather than after. The feud between crows and owls that followed, crows pecking at slumbering owls by day and owls hunting roosting crows under cover of night, remained a living reminder of what nearly happened. It showed how close an entire kingdom once came to being ruled by the very temper its own face had already announced. The warning was there to see, for anyone willing to look closely enough before the final vote was cast.