In this episode, we’re going to do a story from the Jataka tales.
This story features snake people, a kind of turbocharged version of Google translate, and a King who knows how to treat snakes but does not know how to treat his human wife.
The story begins on one fine day in the Kingdom of Benares or Varanasi. Where the children of the Kingdom were playing a friendly game of cricket. No, they weren’t bunking any classes. If there had been a school, they would have been in it. As happens often when an excited group of children is eager to play a whole day of street cricket – in the very first over, they lose their ball and spend the rest of the day discussing how to get it back. That was precisely what happened to this lot when their ball crawled into what looked like an anthill.
“Who’s going to get my ball out of the anthill? Sachin, you get it, you’re the one who knocked it there”
“That’s not my job, ask the fielders!” replied Sachin.
But the fielders didn’t want to either. Ultimately, they resorted to what they figured was the best strategy. If they used the bat and stumps, they could poke around the anthill and avoid getting bitten by what they were sure were the nastiest ants.
They were wrong about the occupants of the anthill, but not about the danger. It wasn’t ants, but a whole family of snakes.
The snakes slithered out quickly from the hole and dashed away.
But enthusiastic little kids that they were, they decided to take it a step further. By trying to beat up the snakes. Or one snake in particular. It was a golden snake that seemed like it was wearing a crown. Like it was a King or something. And it was a King. The King of snakes, appropriately named Nagraj.
A boy with a bat almost hit Nagraj but the Snake managed to slither under the gates to the palace garden. The boys continued their pursuit.
Luckily for the Snake King, the real Human King, Raja, intervened. He’d been strolling in his garden when he saw the boys attempting to kill the Snake King, Nagraj.
“Stop” thundered the King.
Immediately the boys stopped and bowed low.
“Don’t you ignorant boys know Snakes are on the endangered list? Don’t you learn that at school or something?” he asked
“Your majesty, schools haven’t been invented yet” spoke up one boy.
That seemed to explain the matter to the King. But he dismissed the boys anyway with a stern warning never to do it again.
The Snake King, Nagraj stayed hidden long until after the boys and the King had all left the scene. For all he knew Raja had been in on the act. But then when night fell, and he got out of his hiding spot in the branches of a tree, he decided that Raja had saved his life.
That night, as Raja lay snoring in his comfortable bed in the palace, Nagraj slithered in. He crept close to the bed and hovered over the sleeping body of the King. He hissed and opened his mouth when the Raja woke up with a scream!
“Don’t panic!” said Nagraj
“Don’t bite me!” said the Raja.
“Relax. You, humans, are so scared all the time. I’m just here to thank you for saving my life today”
“You…. you’re welcome. And is that all?” he asked as his hand tried to reach for a weapon. He must have a sword or a stick somewhere.
“No, that’s not all,” replied Nagraj. “I’ve also got you a gift”. He gestured with his tail at three boxes. “Pick one of them” he added
“How did you bring those in?” asked the Raja puzzled. “They look far too heavy for a creature with no limbs.
“Never underestimate a snake” replied Nagraj very seriously. “Sure, we don’t have limbs, but we can lasso!”
“So what do I have to do?” asked the Raja. “I just pick one? What do they contain?”
“One of them contains a lot of gold. Another Silver. And the last….”
The King interrupted. “I know, it must have some terrible danger. Like live scorpions or something”
“No, no. What do you take us for? Barbarians? No, open the third one and you basically get to marry my daughter!”
“Marry a snake?” asked Raja shocked.
“Duh! She wouldn’t remain a snake if she were becoming Queen. Look for me for instance” and with that Nagraj transformed himself into a regular-looking human.
“What?! You can transform. But then why didn’t you just protect yourself? Why did you need rescuing from a bunch of 8-year-old boys in the first place?” asked Raja
Nagraj pondered that for a bit “the Buddha didn’t say. Anyway, that’s not the central point of today’s story. So can we get on with it?”
Raja apologized for the interruption and picked one of the boxes at random.
“Don’t you want to peek inside first?” asked Nagraj surprised
“I didn’t know I had a choice!” said Raja. And then he thought. All of the other Kings at his club had had gold and silver. There was nothing weird about it. But a snake-lady for a Queen. That would earn him a good bit of fame!
Nagraj welcomed his choice with open arms.
Nagraj’s daughter, Naagin was soon married to Raja.
Everything went perfectly okay with them, except Raja would sometimes be annoyed at seeing bits of snakeskin lying around the palace. And Naagin’s habit of eating a single heavy meal and then sleeping it off for days.
Well, despite all of these minor annoyances Raja treated Naagin like he should his Queen. Nagraj remarked as much. Raja didn’t think this would be the right time to explain that the reason he was so nice to Naagin was that he was scared of her father.
They chatted a little bit more, during which Nagraj asked if Raja had learned the snake language yet.
“I’ve been trying” replied Raja. “I just wish I was born a parselmouth, or at least I had a dictionary or something.”
“I can do better!” said Nagraj. He swiftly changed into snake form and bit Raja on the foot.
“Ouch! That hurt” said Raja
“Did it really? I wasn’t hurting you. I was just copying my powers. It’s like a USB file transfer – Universal Snake Bite. And besides, it’s worth it. You understand what I’m saying don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Why would that be any different?”
“It is different! Since biting you, I’ve been speaking to you in the Snake language. And you’ve understood me perfectly. Congratulations you can now speak Snake”
Raja was surprised.
“And not just Snake” continued Nagraj. “You can understand the language of any animal. There’s only one condition. If you tell anyone that you have this power, you’re going to drop down dead.”
Raja thought that was easy to deal with. He just would never tell anyone his superpower. That should be easy. At least that’s what he thought.
He managed to keep his powers under control. By not using them at all. But over time it was impossible. Imagine how Superman felt unable to block out the pleading voices when he had super-hearing.
It was no different with the King. Against his best intentions, he couldn’t help hearing everything in sight. And just like Superman, all he heard of was the suffering of the animal world.
The worms complained about birds, the birds complained about the cats, and the cats complained about the dogs, the dogs complained about the gardeners, who complained about the worms. To understand the gardeners of course he did not need to know all these animal languages. He could just understand them.
The cows were not being milked on time, the horses weren’t comfortable in their stables.
The state of the animal world was rather pathetic in the Kingdom. But Raja did not invest directly in fixing anything. His duty was to his people. And Animals were not people.
Although the stuff he was hearing could certainly be used to argue otherwise.
After a few years of this, the King was once eating dinner with one of his Queens when things took a nasty turn. Ironically it happened because he heard for the good time creatures that were actually happy.
As the King and Queen sat eating, he noticed there was a tiny colony of ants on the floor. He was curious if they were any happier than the terrified ants he had heard in the garden yesterday. So he eavesdropped on these palace ants.
“Lieutenant. Our scouts return triumphant. They report that it’s raining cake at 3 o clock.”
Raja wasn’t sure what made him smile. Maybe it was the terrible ant references that these ants were making. Or the sight of the Queen eating her cake sloppily and dropping most of it on the ground. Regardless of the reasons, his smile grew and he eventually burst into laughter.
The Queen paused mid-sentence and asked him “Have you been listening to a word I said?”
“Yes” lied the King.
“Then care to explain what was funny?” the Queen asked
“Oh, don’t you know. It was just fun and amusing.”
“I’ve been explaining how I’ve broken my foot! What’s amusing about it?” she asked acidly
“I …um… well… I mean…. One must always keep one’s sense of humor”
Nothing the King said was convincing the Queen. And he couldn’t tell her the truth. If he did, that would be the last thing he did.
Finally, he told her that if he revealed the secret, he’d drop dead.
“So?” she asked, “what’s the catch?”
It was hard for the King to get out of this. He finally reminded her of the fairy tale/folk tale rule of three. This was just the first occurrence. The rule of three demanded that his first two offenses be forgiven. She had to relent.
The rule of three was not to be taken lightly. It was a globally followed rule.
So she waited. But the King did not get much of a respite. The following week something similar happened with a couple of flies. And the week after that with a couple of mice.
The Queen was totally convinced that Raja was laughing at her. 3 times – it could not be an accident.
And after the third occasion, the King could not refuse. He sadly went about preparing his will. He made all the arrangements necessary for his toddler son to succeed him on the throne. One day.
Dejected about what was going to happen to him the next day, Raja took a last stroll in and around the palace.
When he reached the place where the goats were tied, he heard an interesting conversation. Mr. and Mrs. Goat were arguing. Mrs. Goat wanted Mr. Goat to do all the household work going forward and to manage their kids.
“Mr. Goat objected on the grounds that there were only 24 hours a day”
Mrs. Goat overrode him calmly and reminded Mr. Goat that it was the Queen could order the King about, even unto his death, was it really hard for Mr. Goat to follow instructions?”
“I like our King. Any ideas on how he can survive? On the off-chance that he’s listening to this exact conversation we’re having?”
“Yeah, it’s simple,” said Mrs. Goat. “All he needs is to not tell her”
“But he gave her his word,” asked Mr. Goat
“Well, not he didn’t actually” replied Mrs. Goat. “If I were the King, all I would do is threaten to turn off her cake supply. She’ll have to give in”
“By golly!” said the King.
Why had he not thought of that? It was probably his animal language listening abilities that were interfering with his ability to reason.
But anyway he knew what he was going to do now. He would threaten her with cutting off her access to the royal bakery.
The Queen reacted to the threat just as Mrs. Goat had predicted. The King retained his ability to understand animals. Did it make a difference to his administration? Not one tiny bit.
But I guess the moral of the story here that the Buddha intended was simply that one must not make rash commitments, something that will bring obvious harm to everyone like the King’s demise would have led to, had he revealed his secret.
That’s all for now
Some notes on the show
The Jataka Tales are a collection of stories told by the Buddha. Some of these stories are as much as 2500 years old. Back then, wisdom was presented in a language meant only for the very rich or the very famous. Inaccessible to the common person, these stories served to spread the Buddha’s teachings. We’ve covered many before. Check them out if you’d like to listen or read them:
Episode 79 – Jataka Tales – Mission Impossible
18 – Monkey Business
Episode 14 – Of Mice and Men
But there are hundreds of these stories. And they usually all have a moral at the end.
That’s all for now.
Next Time
In the next episode, we’ll continue the Mahabharata! We’ll hear the next chapter in the lives of the Hastinapur princes.