Akālarāvi Jātaka

The Buddha told Jātaka No. 119, as the Jātaka Atthakatha, the ancient commentary on the tales, records it, while staying at Jetavana near Sāvatthi. The story concerns one monk who made a great deal of noise at the wrong seasons. He came from a good family of Sāvatthi and had left home for the Dhamma, yet he neglected his duties and looked down on instruction.

He paid no attention to the hours set for duties, for ministering to others, or for reciting the texts. Through all three watches of the night, as well as the day, he was never quiet. The other monks could not get any sleep.

The monks gathered in the Hall of Truth, their assembly hall, and criticised his conduct among themselves. The Buddha came in and asked what they were discussing, and they told him. He said that the monk had been noisy out of season in the past as well, and that his unseasonable conduct had once cost him his life. Then he told a story of long ago.

When Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born into a brahmin family of the north. When he grew up he mastered all branches of knowledge. He became a teacher of world-wide fame, with five hundred young brahmins studying under him.

These students kept a cock. He crowed at the proper time and woke them each morning for their lessons. It was a small household arrangement, but the students depended on it.

In time the cock died, and the young brahmins looked about for another. One of them was gathering firewood in the cemetery grove when he saw a cock there. He brought the bird home and kept it in a coop. Nobody asked where the bird had been raised or who had taught it anything.

The new cock had been bred in a cemetery, and the story points out the consequence. He had no knowledge of times and seasons. He crowed whenever he happened to feel like it, at midnight as readily as at daybreak.

The students rose when they heard him at midnight and began their studies. By dawn they were worn out and could not keep their attention on the subject for sleepiness. When he crowed again in broad day, they had no chance of quiet in which to repeat their lessons.

So the bird's crowing, both at midnight and by day, brought their studies to a standstill. The years of learning that the five hundred had come to the teacher for were being worn away one night after another. Their patience ran out.

The students decided that the cock had to go. They wrung his neck. The account is brief and does not dwell on the act. They then went to their teacher and told him that they had put an end to the cock that crowed both in and out of season.

They did not ask him beforehand. They simply reported what they had done and said why. The teacher's reply is the heart of the story.

The Bodhisatta said that it was the bird's bad upbringing that had brought him to his end. For the instruction of his students he spoke a short stanza. It says that no parents trained this bird and no teacher taught him, and so he was heard both in and out of season.

The lesson is plain. A creature that was never trained has no sense of when to speak and when to be still. The bird was not wicked. He had simply been left untaught, and untaught noise harms everyone nearby.

The Jātaka Atthakatha adds that such was the Bodhisatta's teaching on the matter. When he had lived out his allotted time on earth, he passed away to fare according to his deeds. The text offers no further detail about the students or their later lives. The story ends where its single point is made.

At the close of his lesson the Buddha identified the birth. The noisy monk of the present was the cock of those times, who did not know when not to crow. The Buddha's own disciples were the young brahmins of that story, and the Buddha himself was their teacher.

Jātaka No. 119 is a small story about timing and training. The Buddha applied it to a monk who treated his own voice as if it had no season. In a community of monks sharing one hall, one person's noise at midnight became everyone's lost sleep and lost attention.

The story does not say that the monk was cruel or corrupt. It says that he had neglected his duties and despised instruction, and the cock shows where that leads: a life without guidance disturbs others without even noticing.