Jataka 148 Sigala

Sigala Jataka

Once on a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was re born into life as a jackal and dwelt in the forest by the river side. Now an old elephant died by the banks of the Ganges, and the jackal, finding the carcass, congratulated himself on lighting upon such a story of meat. First he bit the trunk, but that was like biting a plough handle. "There's no eating here," said the jackal and took a bite at a tusk. But that was like biting bones. Then he tried an ear but that was, like chewing the rim of a winnowing basket. So he fell to on the stomach, but found it as tough as a grain basket. The feet were no better, for they were like a mortar. Next he tried the tail, but that was like the pestle. "That won't do either," said the jackal; and having failed elsewhere to find a toothsome part, he tried the rear and found that like eating a soft cake. "At last," said he, "I've found the right place," and ate his way right into the belly, where he made a plenteous meal off the kidneys, heart and the rest, quenching his thirst with the blood. And when night came on, he lay down inside.

As he lay there the thought came into the jackal's mind, "This carcass is both meat and house to me and wherefore should I leave it?" So there he stopped, and dwelt in the elephant's inwards, eating away. Time wore on till the summer sun and the summer winds dried and shrank the elephant's hide, until the entrance by which the jackal had got in was closed and the interior was in utter darkness. Thus the jackal was, as it were, cut off from the world and confined in the interspace between the worlds. After the hide, the flesh dried up and the blood was exhausted. In a frenzy of despair, he rushed to and fro beating against his prison walls in the fruitless endeavour to escape. But as he bobbed up and down inside like a ball of rice in a boiling saucepan, soon a tempest broke and the downpour moistened the shall of the carcass and restored it to its former state, till light shone like a star through the way by which the jackal had got in. "Saved! Saved!" cried the jackal, and, backing into the elephant's head made a rush head first at the outlet. He managed to get through, it is true, but only by leaving all his hair on the way. And first he ran, then he halted, and then sat down and surveyed his hairless body, now smooth as a palm stem. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "this misfortune has befallen me because of my greed and my greed alone. Henceforth I will not be greedy nor every again into the carcass of an elephant." And his terror found expression in this stanza:

Once bitten, twice shy. Ah, great was my fear!

Of elephant's inwards henceforth I'll steer clear.

And with these words the jackal made off, nor did he ever again so much as look either at that or at any other elephant's carcass. And thenceforth he was never greedy again.