I had occasion to revisit the Jatakas recently and was much struck by the ferocity of the Maha Sutasoma Jataka, which is Number 537 in the Pali canon. Why were such stark stories told, I wondered. But the answer was apparent at once. The Jatakas were cautionary tales meant to teach the dreadful consequences of vice and why destructive habits should be shunned.
This story goes that the Buddha, in a previous birth as a Bodhisattva, was a prince and sent to study at Taxila university. His best friend there was the prince of Varanasi. The Bodhisattva was the topper and tutored his friend. Eventually, they both went home and became kings. The prince of Varanasi never ate a meal without meat and continued doing so as king.
One day, some dogs got into the royal kitchen and ate up all the meat. The terrified cook didn’t know what to do. He rushed to a cemetery, cut off a part of a freshly-buried corpse, and cooked that.
The king found it so delicious that he questioned the cook closely and the cook confessed. But instead of being properly revolted, the depraved king told him to serve human flesh every day. The Jataka says this unnatural desire was because the king had been a goblin in his previous birth who frequently ate human flesh.
The cook was ordered to source flesh from the prisoners in the city jail. This went on until the prison was empty. Then the cannibal king told his cook to drop a bag with one thousand coins in the street and take anyone who picked it up to be cooked. But soon, people learned it was a trap and avoided all unclaimed bags––which sadly reminds us of warnings against terrorist bombs in unclaimed bags today.
So, the king told his cook to hide by a road and kill people at random to obtain their flesh. The city fell into utter panic.
A crowd of agitated citizens stormed into the palace courtyard and begged their king to find the killer. When he flatly refused to do anything, to their great dismay and puzzlement––was he not their king and protector?––they turned in despair to the senapati, the commander-in-chief of the army.
The senapati himself had been waiting impatiently for royal orders to catch the killer and was on the brink of taking it up with the king. He was shocked by the king’s response and being a good man with a strong sense of public duty, he ordered his soldiers to hide throughout the city. They soon discovered and captured the cook. He was beaten up and confessed. When the cook was taken to face the king, the king had nowhere to hide. He owned up to the disgusting and frightening fact that the cook was merely acting on his orders. But he declared defiantly that he would never give up eating human flesh.
The horrified commander-in-chief told the cannibal king that he would be driven out of the city if he did not stop, and would come to a sorry end like what happened to a young man who would not give up alcohol.
This young man was the only son of a wealthy family, and thoroughly virtuous. But one day, his friends tricked him into drinking alcohol for the first time by pouring some fiery liquor into cups made of lotus leaves and telling the young man it was lotus nectar. He drank it down and got drunk, which he unfortunately enjoyed very much.
So, he and his friends kept drinking, and when they ran out of liquor, the young man pawned his gold signet ring to buy more. He went home in total disarray and passed out. His father reasoned gently with him at first. He told him to never drink again because they were a respected family and if their reputation was destroyed, so would their business. But, the son refused and was duly kicked out of home. He died a wretched death as a beggar on the streets.
However, the cannibal king was unmoved by this story. As a final attempt, the commander-in-chief brought out the cannibal king’s wife and children and asked him to choose between them and eating human flesh. But, the king refused and had to be driven out of Varanasi with the cook. He camped under a banyan tree by the highway and killed wayfarers for food. One day, when no victim appeared, he killed and ate the cook.
The Bodhisattva was then urgently sent for to do something about his friend, and went boldly to him. The Bodhisattva prayed that his friend should live a healthy, happy life for a hundred years. This pleased the cannibal king so much that he granted the Bodhisattva a wish.
At once, the Bodhisattva asked the cannibal king to stop eating people. But he laughed uproariously and refused, and told the Bodhisattva to make some other wish. But the Bodhisattva wouldn’t give up, and managed, through several moral stories, to fill the cannibal king with a great fear of hell and a strong desire for heaven.
Finally, the cannibal king’s hard heart cracked itself free of his terrible addiction. He broke into tears and promised to stop. He threw himself at the Bodhisattva’s feet and prayed for redemption.
The cannibal king, says the Jataka, was an earlier birth of Angulimala, the dreaded bandit who cut off a finger from each person he murdered and wore them around his neck in a gristly garland. But the Buddha converted him into a gentle, enlightened person. A terrifying story against harmful addictions, is it not?
(Views are personal)
(shebaba09@gmail.com)
Renuka Narayanan