Ekanipata

Entrusted with watering young saplings in the king’s pleasure garden, foolish monkeys pull each tree up by the roots to measure how much water to give, destroying the entire orchard.

After Kosala kills the Bodhisatta king of Benares, their son besieges the city on his captive mother's secret counsel, a choice with a painful karmic echo.

A merchant's widow reborn as a mouse is ransomed by four cats until the stone-cutter Bodhisatta shelters her in a crystal cell and she rewards him with her hidden treasure.

A master drummer teaches his son to fool forest bandits with slow beats, but the boy's showy, rapid playing gives away exactly what the bandits fear least.

Shipwrecked and alone, Prince Janaka swims seven days through open ocean, refusing despair, until the sea goddess Manimekhala rescues him.

A prince vows before a banyan-tree deity to end animal sacrifice, and his proclamation as king so frightens wrongdoers that not one sacrifice is ever needed.

A contented pigeon in a treasurer's kitchen warns a crow against stealing fish; the crow's greed costs him his feathers and his life.

Six times a gardener's attachment to his old spade drags him back from the forest, until he hurls it into the Ganges and his cry of victory converts King Brahmadatta and all Benares.

A monk who buried an Arahant's meal in burning ash is reborn through hell, hunger, and the wanderer Mitta-Vindaka before becoming Losaka Tissa.

A slighted ascetic falsely calls the stars inauspicious, delaying a wedding until the bride is given to another; the Bodhisatta declares that timely action is the only true lucky star.

The youngest of a hundred princes outwits man-eating ogresses through a sage's counsel and wins a kingdom by steadfastness, not courage alone.

A monk who gave up striving hears how Prince Five-Weapons, every weapon stuck fast in an ogre's hair, faced certain death unafraid and converted the beast the Buddha later names as Angulimala.

A caravan leader spots a mango-like tree left untouched near a village and knows it must be deadly, saving his men from poison and robbers alike.

Rogues drug a brew to rob a wealthy treasurer, and he catches the trick by noticing one simple fact: not one of them has touched a drop of their own drink.

Told at Jetavana to end a kinsfolk's water quarrel, this tale (No. 74) shows a storm felling proud, solitary tree-giants while the united forest grove stands untouched.

The Bodhisatta, an elephant chief named Sīlava, saves a lost forester who repays him by sawing off his tusks three times; the earth swallows the ingrate, later identified as Devadatta.

When a woman's husband, son, and brother are wrongly condemned, the king offers to spare one; her choice of her brother reveals why she chose him.

A tavern apprentice, mistaking customers' habit of chewing salt with their drink, stirs salt straight into the vat and ruins a prized liquor.

A hermit called Veḷuka's Father raises a viper in a bamboo tube like a child; ignoring every warning, he is fatally bitten when the hungry snake turns on him.