0167. The Abodes of the Tree Fairies

From The Jataka Volume 1 translated by Robert Chalmers, online at: Sacred Texts Archive.

Notes. This is the Rukkhadhamma Jataka. You can read another jataka story about a Shal tree here: The Spirit That Lived in a Tree.

Summary: The wise tree fairies find homes that can survive the tempest, unlike the foolish tree fairies.

Read the story below:

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THE ABODES OF THE TREE FAIRIES

(Indian forest)

Once on a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the first King Vessavaṇa died, and Sakka sent a new king to reign in his stead. After the change, the new King Vessavaṇa sent word to all trees and shrubs and bushes and plants, bidding the tree-fairies each choose out the abode that liked them best.

In those days the Bodhisatta had come to life as a tree-fairy in a Sāl-forest in the Himalayas. His advice to his kinsfolk in choosing their habitations was to shun trees that stood alone in the open, and to take up their abodes all round the abode which he had chosen in that Sāl-forest. Hereon the wise tree-fairies, following the Bodhisatta's advice, took up their quarters round his tree.

But the foolish ones said, "Why should we dwell in the forest? Let us rather seek out the haunts of men, and take up our abodes outside villages, towns, or capital cities. For fairies who dwell in such places receive the richest offerings and the greatest worship." So they departed to the haunts of men, and took up their abode in certain giant trees which grew in an open space.

Now it fell out upon a day that a mighty tempest swept over the country. Naught did it avail the solitary trees that years had rooted them deep in the soil and that they were the mightiest trees that grew. Their branches snapped; their stems were broken; and they themselves were uprooted and flung to earth by the tempest.

But when it broke on the Sāl-forest of interlacing trees, its fury was in vain; for, attack where it might, not a tree could it overthrow.

The forlorn fairies whose dwellings were destroyed, took their children in their arms and journeyed to the Himalayas. There they told their sorrows to the fairies of the Sāl-forest, who in turn told the Bodhisatta of their sad return.

"It was because they hearkened not to the words of wisdom, that they have been brought to this," said he; and he unfolded the truth in this stanza:
United, forest-like, should kinsfolk stand;
The storm o’erthrows the solitary tree.

So spake the Bodhisatta; and when his life was spent, he passed away to fare according to his deserts.