Ja 297: Kama-Vilapa Jātaka
Translated by W. H. D. Rouse
Edited by E. B. Cowell
Original edition: Cambridge University Press, volume 2, 1895
Source HTML: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/suttacentral/sc-data/2d9ca8da858f94302ed6783e2717bf73d651881b/html_text/en/pli/sutta/kn/ja/vol2/ja297.html
Pinned source revision: https://github.com/suttacentral/sc-data/commit/2d9ca8da858f94302ed6783e2717bf73d651881b
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.
Changes: Converted the pinned SuttaCentral HTML article to plain text; removed inline print page-reference labels and normalized whitespace. The original source retains references.

“O bird, that fliest,” etc.—This story the Master told at Jetavana, about a man who pined for his former wife. The circumstances which called it forth are explained in the Puppharatta Birth-tale, and the tale of the past in the Indriya Birth-tale.

 So the man was impaled alive. As he hung there, he looked up and saw a crow flying through the air; and, nought reeking of the hitter pain, he hailed the crow, to send a message to his dear wife, repeating these verses following:

“O bird, that fliest in the sky!

O winged bird, that fliest high!

Tell my wife, with thighs so fair:

Long will seem the time to her.

“She knows not sword and spear are set:

Full wroth and angry she will fret.

That is my torment and my fear,

And not that I am hanging here.

“My lotus-mail I have put by,

And jewels in my pillow lie,

And soft Benares cloth beside.

With wealth let her be satisfied.”

 With these lamentations, he died.

When the Mister had ended this discourse, he declared the Truths, and identified the Birth (now at the conclusion of the Truths, the lovesick brother attained the fruition of the First Path): “The wife then was the wife now; but the spirit who saw this, was I myself.”

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.