The Account of the Bird Jatayu

Rama, grandson of King Anaranya and son of Dasharatha, went with Lakshmana and Sita toward the southern ocean through a fearsome, pathless forest of dark mountain caves and roaring waterfalls where even Bhils could not go, covering one kos a day for Sita's sake, and reached the Narmada river. There, in the dense shade of fruiting trees, they rested and sported in the water, and Sita prepared a delicious meal of ripe fruits and forest grains in pots freshly made of clay and bamboo.

At mealtime the brothers stood waiting to receive monks for alms, and the two charana munis (monks able to travel through the sky) Gupti and Sugupti, possessors of the three knowledges mati, shruta and avadhi (sensory, scriptural and clairvoyant), came through the sky after a month-long fast; Sita saw them first and cried, ‘Here they come!’ Rama and Sita went forward, bowed and with the ninefold devotion (navadha bhakti) fed them milk of wild buffaloes and forest cows, grapes, dates, nuts, forest grains, fragrant ghee and sweets, and when the monks had broken their fast without hindrance the five wonders occurred: a rain of gems, a shower of flowers, a cool fragrant breeze, celestial drums and cries of victory.

A gridhra (vulture) perched on a tree saw the monks and, with purified feelings, remembered its past lives: it had been a man who, misled by sinful so-called friends, had abandoned the jewels of dharma, defied its gurus and wasted its human birth. Weeping and flapping its wings, it fell from the tree, scattering elephants and lions and alarming Sita, who tried to drive it off, but it fell into the gandhodaka (the water that had washed the monks' feet) and at once its body shone like a heap of jewels, its claws golden, its feet like vaidurya (cat's-eye gems), its body of many gem-colours and its beak coral-red; overjoyed, it danced, then folded its wings and sat bowing before the monks.

When Rama asked how this ugly, flesh-eating vulture had become radiant and calm, Sugupti told him that this place was once the great land of Dandaka, full of villages, cities, pattanas (towns with gem mines), samvahanas (hill settlements), matambas (towns with five hundred villages), ghoshas (cowherd settlements), khetas (towns fronted by a river), karvatas (towns backed by a mountain) and dronamukhas (towns by the sea). Its mighty, proud King Dandaka of Karnakundala city was this bird; under the sway of his queen, a devotee of the staff-bearing dandi ascetics, he followed false scriptures and the parivrajaka (wandering mendicant) path.

One day the pitiless king hung a dead snake around the neck of a monk meditating in the forest, who vowed not to move until someone removed it; days later Dandaka found that a good man had just taken the snake off and that the monk had borne it untroubled, and from then on he became devoted to monks. Enraged, the queen had her own guru disguise himself as a Nirgrantha (unclothed Jain) monk and behave lewdly in her palace, and the king, deceived and urged on by wicked, false-believing ministers, ordered all the monks, the acharya included, to be crushed in an oil-press (ghani).

One monk who had gone out to relieve himself was warned on his return by a kind man to flee and preserve his body, the instrument of dharma; pierced by grief at the slaughter of his order, he stood motionless a moment, then wrath burst from the cave of his equanimity like a lion, his eyes reddened, and a blazing effigy of fire (taijasa) issued from his left shoulder and burned the whole land, so that king, harem, villages, cities, mountains, rivers and forests perished, not one creature survived, and the equanimity he had earned over long years was stolen in an instant by the enemy, anger. Because King Dandaka's land was annihilated it is called the Dandaka forest, where for years not even grass grew until wandering monks restored it, a place feared even by gods; and Dandaka, after wandering long through hells and animal births, became this vulture, whose sins have now lessened so that on seeing the monks it recalled its past.

Consoling the trembling bird, the monk told it to give up remorse, since what is destined cannot be undone, marvelling at how karma had brought together this forest, Rama and Sita's coming, the monks' rule of accepting food only from lay devotees met in the forest, and the bird's awakening; then, at Rama's wish, Sugupti told of his and Gupti's renunciation. In Varanasi, King Achala and Queen Giridevi once fed Muni Trigupti, and when the queen asked whether she would have a son, the monk, who kept the restraint of speech, foretold two wise sons, so the boys born by his blessing were named Sugupti and Gupti and grew up as accomplished, beloved princes.

In Gandhavati city the royal priest Soma had two devoted sons, Suketu and Agniketu; when Suketu married, fearing that a wife might one day divide them, he turned to renunciation and became a monk under Anantavirya, while Agniketu, grief-stricken, became a tapasa in Varanasi. When Suketu sought leave to enlighten his brother, his guru foretold that during their debate a fair maiden in many-coloured clothes would come to the Ganga bank with three women in the late afternoon, and that Suketu should reveal her as Ruchira, daughter of the merchant Pravara, who would die in three days, be reborn as a goat in Kambara village in the house of Vilasa, her father's maternal uncle, be killed by a jackal, then become a rhinoceros, then a buffalo, and finally be born as Vilasa's daughter Vidhura.

All came to pass as foretold, and when the merchant Pravara was about to marry Vidhura, Agniketu told him she was his own daughter Ruchira reborn after several animal births, now the daughter of his maternal uncle, so he must not marry her; recalling her past life, the girl declared before the assembly that Pravara had been her father, renounced her family and became an aryika (nun), and Agniketu the tapasa became a monk. Hearing this story, Sugupti and Gupti were filled with detachment and took the vows of monks under Anantavirya, for, the monk said, delusion breeds countless misdeeds that only a true guru's guidance dispels.

Hearing that the world is hollow and that parents, friends, wives and children are all perishable, the bird, now afraid of the sorrows of samsara, cried out again and again for dharma, and the monk gave it the lay vows: harm no living being, give up falsehood, do not steal, renounce others' wives and keep complete celibacy, cultivate contentment, avoid eating at night and forbidden food, meditate on the Jina at the three daily samayika (equanimity) times, fast, master the senses, serve sadhus and have faith in the Arhat as God, the Nirgrantha as guru and compassion as dharma. The bird bowed and took the vows, Sita caressed it with her own hands, the monks entrusted this right-believing bird to her constant protection in the beast-filled forest, and she cherished it as Garuda's mother cherished Garuda as the monks departed through the sky.

Lakshmana subdued a rutting wild elephant that was ravaging the forest and rode the mountain-like beast to Rama, while the wise bird kept its anuvratas (minor vows), ate only pure fruits, grains and filtered water, and travelled everywhere with Rama, Lakshmana and Sita, growing firm in faith by hearing their discussions of dharma. Because crests (jata) of feathers shining like gold and gems grew on its body, Rama named it Jatayu; thrice daily it bowed with Sita to the Arhats, Siddhas and Sadhus, and when Sita kept time and the brothers sang, Jatayu, shining like the sun, danced to the beat, so Gautama tells Shrenika to behold the power of dharma, by which a foul flesh-eating bird became beautiful and fragrant in that very life.