Nandiyamiga Jātaka

Jataka No. 385 of the Pali Canon was told by the Buddha to defend a monk who had been criticized by his fellow monks. The monk had left the order's daily routine to care for his own aged parents, and the Buddha recalled an old story of a deer who had once given up his own safety for the very same reason.

In that former life, the King of Kosala loved to hunt, and his pursuit of the forest's deer had grown relentless. Hoping to spare the wider woodland from constant disturbance, his subjects devised a plan. A great herd of deer would be driven into an enclosed royal park, where the king could hunt to his heart's content without his huntsmen needing to range through the forest at large.

Among the deer born in that forest was the Bodhisatta, a stag named Nandiya, who lived devotedly with his aged parents and provided for them with constant care. When the great drive began and deer were herded toward the enclosed park, Nandiya placed himself among the captured animals and let himself be taken. He concealed from the hunters that his own parents still remained free in the forest beyond the park's walls.

Once gathered inside the park, the deer arranged themselves into an order by which each, in turn, would be led out to face the king's bow. In this way no single animal would be hunted twice while others were spared entirely. Nandiya accepted his own place in this order exactly as the other deer had. The king provisioned the park with food and water for every animal confined there, and expected nothing more from any of them than their patience until their turn arrived.

Word of Nandiya's capture eventually reached his parents. They sent back an urgent plea, carried by a sympathetic brahmin messenger. It begged their son to slip away from the park and return to them while there was still time, rather than wait passively for a turn that could only end in his death.

Nandiya could have escaped, yet he chose to remain. He explained that the king had fed and watered him throughout his captivity, and that slipping away now, with his own turn so near, would repay that provision with nothing but betrayal. He resolved to accept whatever came when his place in the order arrived, exactly as he had accepted his place among the captured herd from the very beginning.

When Nandiya's turn finally came, he stood before the king to be shot. The king found that his bow would not obey him as it always had before, as though the stag's own steadfast virtue had reached further than any ordinary deer's fear ever could. Sensing that no common animal stood before him, the king set aside his weapon and asked Nandiya to explain himself.

Nandiya answered honestly. He told the king of his aged parents waiting beyond the park, and of the debt of gratitude that had kept him from fleeing. He spoke too of the deer still confined within the park's walls, who faced the very fate he had just been spared. Moved by what he heard, the king offered Nandiya a boon. The stag asked not for his own freedom alone but for the safety of every living creature the king's hunting might otherwise have claimed.

Granting the request in full, the king abolished the hunting park and released every deer gathered within it. He then extended his protection to the forest's creatures far beyond what Nandiya himself had asked for, turning one stag's gratitude and filial devotion into safety for an entire kingdom's wildlife.

At the story's end, the Buddha identified the King of Kosala with Ananda (his own cousin and closest attendant), and the brahmin who had carried the parents' message with Sariputta (one of the Buddha's two chief disciples). The same loyalty that had once led a monk to set aside his daily routine for his own parents' sake had, in an older life, led a deer to choose a debt of gratitude over his own certain safety. Both choices, the Buddha showed, deserved the same honor rather than reproach.