Bāveru Jātaka

The Master told this story at Jetavana, and its occasion was the fortune of certain teachers of other schools. Before the Buddha was born, these teachers had received gain and honor. After his birth they lost both, like fireflies when the sun rises.

The monks discussed this in the Hall of Truth. When the Master came in and asked what they were speaking of, they told him. The tale is numbered 339 in the Jātaka, the collection of birth stories in the Pali Canon.

The Master said that this was not true only now. Long ago too, before those endowed with virtue appeared, people without virtue attained the highest gain and glory. When the virtuous appeared, those who lacked virtue lost their gain and glory. With this he told a legend of bygone days.

Once, while Brahmadatta ruled in Benares, the Bodhisatta came to life as a young peacock. When he was fully grown he was exceedingly beautiful, and he lived in a forest.

At that time some merchants came to the kingdom of Bāveru. They carried a foreign crow on board their ship. In Bāveru, the story says, there were no birds at all.

Whenever natives of the land saw the bird perched on top of the mast, they remarked on it. They praised the color of its skin, its beaked mouth at the end of its throat, and its eyes like jewel balls. They begged the merchants to give them the bird, saying that the merchants could get another in their own country.

The merchants agreed to sell it at a price. The people offered a single piece of money, and the merchants refused. Little by little the people raised their offer, until they said they would give a hundred pieces of money.

The merchants answered that the bird was very useful to them, but that they wished for friendship between the two sides. So they sold it for one hundred pieces.

The natives took the crow and put it in a golden cage. They fed it with various kinds of fish and meat and with wild fruits. In a place where no other birds existed, a crow endowed with ten evil qualities attained the highest gain and glory.

The next time the merchants came to Bāveru they brought a royal peacock. They had trained it to cry out at the snapping of fingers and to dance at the clapping of hands. When a crowd had gathered, the bird stood in the fore part of the vessel, flapped its wings, uttered a sweet sound and danced.

The people who saw it were highly delighted. They called it a king of birds, very beautiful and well trained, and asked the merchants to give it to them.

The merchants protested. They had first brought a crow, and the people had taken it. Now they begged for this peacock as well. It would be impossible, they said, to come to that country and even mention the name of any bird.

The people urged them to be content and to get another bird in their own land. They raised the price again and again, and at last bought the peacock for a thousand pieces.

They put the peacock in a cage ornamented with the seven jewels. They fed it fish and flesh and wild fruits, and also honey, fried corn, sugar water and the like. Thus the royal peacock received the highest gain and glory.

From the day of his coming, the gain and honor paid to the crow fell away. No one wanted even to look at it. The crow no longer received food either hard or soft. With a cry of "Caw, caw," it went and settled on a dunghill.

The Master joined the two stories together in four stanzas. Before the crested peacock appeared, he said, crows were revered with gifts of fruit and meat. When the sweet-voiced peacock came to Bāveru, the crow was at once stripped of gifts and fame.

So it was with people and their teachers, he went on. Men paid due honor to various priests until the Buddha displayed the full light of Truth. When the sweet-voiced Buddha preached the law, people withdrew their gifts and praise from the teachers of other schools.

After speaking these stanzas, the Master identified the birth. In the text, the Jain teacher Nāthaputta was the crow, and the Master himself was the royal peacock. The identification is recorded as the tradition states it, within the rivalry of teachers in the Buddha's own day.

The crow in this story did nothing wrong by being a crow. It was honored only because the people of Bāveru had never seen a bird, and its fortune ended when they met a better one. The story points less at the crow than at the way honor follows what is available, and moves on when something truer appears.

For a devotee the lesson is quiet and practical. Honor that comes from lack of comparison is brittle, while the Teacher's worth does not depend on the absence of rivals. The Buddha is shown here as a peacock who needs no golden cage to be what he is.