Vyaggha Jātaka

Jataka No. 272 of the Pali Canon was told by the Buddha concerning Kokalika, a follower of Devadatta. Kokalika had angered the townspeople by slandering the two chief disciples, Sariputta and Moggallana, who had come to stay nearby. When the townspeople told him to bring the elders back or leave, he went to Jetavana and asked them to return with him. They refused, and he went back alone. The Buddha said that in the past too Kokalika could live neither with nor without these two, and he told of a former life in which the same foolishness had once destroyed an entire forest.

In the days of King Brahmadatta of Varanasi, the Bodhisatta, the Buddha-to-be in an earlier life, was born as a wise tree spirit dwelling in a forest. Another, foolish tree spirit lived in a great tree nearby.

In that same woodland a lion and a tiger made their home. They killed and ate the creatures of the forest, and because people feared them, no one dared to farm or cut timber there. The forest stood undisturbed, sheltered by the fearsome reputation of the two beasts.

However, the lion and the tiger were untidy carnivores. They devoured what they wished and left the remainder to rot, so that the stench of decaying carcasses hung over the forest and offended the spirits who had to breathe that air every day.

The foolish tree spirit, plagued by the heavy stench, proposed that the two spirits drive the lion and the tiger away so that the forest would be clean again.

The Bodhisatta shook his head and explained that the stench was unpleasant, but that the beasts were the forest's protection. Men who saw their tracks stayed far away; if the animals left, people would clear the forest. He spoke two verses on the power of friendship: through association with a bad friend one's security declines, so the wise guard against such influence as carefully as they guard their eyes; through association with a good friend one's security grows, and the wise treat a spiritual friend as they would themselves.

Yet the foolish spirit refused to listen and scorned the counsel. By frightening the lion and the tiger, the spirit drove them out of the forest, and they departed for another wood.

The people noticed that no tracks of the lion and tiger were to be seen and concluded that the animals had gone. Coming with axes and saws, they began to clear the forest and cut down one side of it. Only then did the foolish spirit's triumph turn to distress.

The foolish spirit hurried to the Bodhisatta and confessed her fault. The Bodhisatta told her that the animals had gone to another wood, and sent her to bring them back. She went to them, greeted them respectfully, and begged them in a verse to return to the great forest, so that the forest would not be cut down and left without its tigers. The lion and the tiger refused and told her to go away. She returned alone, and within a few days the men had cut down the whole forest and turned it into cultivated fields.

At the story's end, the Buddha identified the foolish tree spirit with Kokalika, the lion with Sariputta, the tiger with Moggallana, and the wise tree spirit with himself. The same impulsive foolishness which had once cost a forest its guardians for the sake of a cleaner smell was the pattern driving Kokalika's own hasty quarrel with the two elders.

The lesson of the Bodhisatta's two verses is that the company one keeps, whether it strengthens or weakens one's safety, must be judged with care. What this story preserved was never a simple lesson about tigers or trees. It was a warning about how easily an unpleasant but protective arrangement can be mistaken for a problem worth solving by force, when the true cost of removing it only becomes visible once it is too late to reverse.