The Bodhisatta was once a lion. His son, who did all the hunting for the family (his father, mother, sister, and wife), once met a jackal who asked to be his servant, and the son agreed. So the jackal moved into the son’s den. The Bodhisatta told his son that jackals were wicked beasts and they gave bad advice, so he should not befriend them; but the son did not listen.
One day the jackal had a desire for horse flesh, the only meat he had never eaten, and convinced the son to go catch a horse in the city. He went down to the river where the horses bathed and grabbed one, throwing it on his back to carry it home. While the Bodhisatta ate the horse meat, he told his son that all horses are royal property and lions who attack horses don’t live long. But the son again ignored his father’s warning and continued to steal horses, even after the king tried to protect them by building a stable inside the town.
Eventually the king sent an archer to kill the lion. As the archer waited in a tower, the Bodhisatta’s son jumped over the wall and rushed in to kill a horse so quickly that the archer could not shoot in time. But carrying the dead horse on his back slowed the Bodhisatta’s son down, and the archer shot an arrow straight through his body. The son reached the mouth of his den and there fell dead. Seeing the bloody corpse, his family mourned that a terrible fate such as this was sure to come from following the advice of outcasts rather than true friends. The jackal returned to live in the forest.
In the Lifetime of the Buddha
The Bodhisatta’s son was an earlier birth of one of the Buddha’s disciples who had been persuaded by a friend to skip his morning alms rounds and eat fancy meals at the monastery of Devadatta (the jackal was an earlier birth of him), a disciple of the Buddha who became his nemesis. The Buddha told this story to the traitorous disciple and those who had reported his misbehavior so they knew that this disciple also kept bad company in the past.
The Bodhisatta’s wife was an earlier birth of the Buddha’s wife, and his daughter and daughter-in-law were earlier births of Uppalavanna and Khema, two of the Buddha’s top female disciples.
