Ja 237: Saketa Jātaka
Translated by W. H. D. Rouse
Edited by E. B. Cowell
Original edition: Cambridge University Press, volume 2, 1895
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License: Public Domain (original English edition, published 1895–1907)
Scope: Complete numbered source article from the traditional Jātaka commentary; canonical verses appear in story context. This is not a verse-only edition.
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“Why are hearts cold,” etc.—This story the Master told during a stay near Saketa, about a brahmin named Saketa. Both the circumstances that suggested the story and the story itself have already been given in the First Book.

 …And when the Tathagata had gone to the monastery, the Brother asked, “How, Sir, did the love begin? “and repeated the first stanza—

Why are hearts cold to one—O Buddha, tell!—

And love another so exceeding well?”

The Master explained the nature of love by the second stanza:

“Those love they who in other lives were dear,

As sure as grows the lotus in the mere.”

After this discourse was ended, the Master identified the Birth—“These two people were the brahmin and his wife in the story; and I was their son.”

The Jātaka, or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births, edited by E.B. Cowell, published by The Cambridge University Press.

Vol. 1, translated by Robert Chalmers, 1895.

Vol. 2, translated by W.H.D. Rouse, 1895.

Vol. 3, translated by H.T. Francis and R.A. Neil, 1897.

Vol. 4, translated by W.H.D. Rouse, 1901.

Vol. 5, translated by H.T. Francis, 1905.

Vol. 6, translated by E.B. Cowell and W.H.D. Rouse, 1907.

These translations are in the public domain. You are free to do whatever you like with them.

Scanned, proofed and formatted at sacred-texts.com, January 2006–February 2010, by John Bruno Hare and others. Thanks to the Sacred Texts Archive for making these texts available in digital form.

Prepared for SuttaCentral by Bhikkhu Sujato.