Jataka 139 Ubhatobhattha

Ubhatobhattha Jataka

Once on a time, when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was born a Tree Sprit, and there was a certain village where line fishermen dwelt in those days. And one of these fishermen taking his tackle went off with his little boy, and cast his hook into the most likely waters known to his fellow fishermen. Now a snag caught his hook and the fishermen could not pull it up. "What a fine fish!" thought he. "I'd better send my boy off home to my wife and tell her to get up a quarrel and keep the others at home, so that there'll be none to want to go shares in my prize." Accordingly he told the lad to run off home and tell his mother what a big fish he had hooked and how she was to engage the neighbours attention. Then, fearing his line might break, he flung off his coat and dashed into the water to secure his prize. But as he groped about for the fish, he struck against the snag and put out both his eyes. Moreover a robber stole his clothes from the bank. In an agony of pain, with his hands pressed to his blinded eyes, he clambered out trembling in every limb and tried to find his clothes.

Meantime his wife, to occupy the neighbours by a quarrel on purpose, had tricked herself out with a palm leaf behind one ear, and had blacked one eye with soot from the saucepan. In this guise, nursing a dog, she came out to call on her neighbours. "Bless me, you've gone mad," said one woman to her. "Not mad at all," retorted the fisherman's wife; "you abuse me without cause with your slanderous tongue. Come your ways with me to the zemindar and I'll have you fined eight pieces for slander."

So with angry words they went off to the zemindar. But when the matter was gone into, it was the fishermen's wife who was fined; and she was tied up and beaten to make her pay the fine. Now when the Tree Sprite saw how misfortune had befallen both the wife in the village and the husband in the forest, he stood in the fork of his tree and exclaimed, "Ah fisherman, both in the water and on land thy labour is in vain, and twofold is thy failure." So saying he uttered this stanza:

His blinding and her beating, clearly show

A twofold failure and a twofold woe.