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Prince Sattva was one of the previous incarnations of
Gautama Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism.
According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in Lu ...
, according to a
jataka
The Jฤtakas (meaning "Birth Story", "related to a birth") are a voluminous body of literature native to India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, th ...
story.
Ascetic life
The son of King Maharatha, he became an
ascetic and gained a few disciples.
Dilemma
On his walk with his closest disciple, he comes to the edge of a cliff, at the bottom of which is a starving tigress about to eat her newborn cubs in desperation. The bodhisattva tells his disciple to go look for food and he will stay and try to figure out a way to save her and her young. While his disciple is gone, the
bodhisattva
In Buddhism, a bodhisattva ( ; sa, ๐ฉ๐๐ฅ๐บ๐ฒ๐ข๐๐ข๐๐ฏ (Brahmฤซ), translit=bodhisattva, label=Sanskrit) or bodhisatva is a person who is on the path towards bodhi ('awakening') or Buddhahood.
In the Early Buddhist schools ...
reflects that while his disciple very well may not find food, his body is just so much flesh as the tradition states, and by giving it up, he can save the tigress' purity and her cubs' lives. He leaps off the cliff to his death, attracting the tigress' attention with his impact, and she eats his body.
Achievement and legacy
In this way, he comes closer to perfecting some of the
ten Buddhist perfections: those of generosity, renunciation, morality, resolution and equanimity. His disciple returns, having not found food, and upon discovering what the bodhisattva has done, rejoices in his good deed. He comes back with other disciples and they and the heavens shower the spot with
lotus flowers.
Stupa
The Chinese pilgrim
Faxian
Faxian (ๆณ้กฏ ; 337 CE โ c. 422 CE), also referred to as Fa-Hien, Fa-hsien and Sehi, was a Chinese Buddhist monk and translator who traveled by foot from China to India to acquire Buddhist texts. Starting his arduous journey about age 60, h ...
reported one of the four great
stupas of northern India that commemorates this incarnation's ''dehadana''. This dehadana is known as "gift of the body" in
Indian Buddhist narrative literature.
[R. Ohnuma, Dehadana: The 'Gift of the Body' in Indian Buddhist narrative literature.199]
/ref>
References
Gautama Buddha
Jataka tales
Indian folklore
Indian literature
Indian fairy tales
Indian legendary characters
Indian legends
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