Pañcavudha Jataka: Prince Five-weapons (Jat 55)
Buddha told this story while at Jetavana monastery, about a monk who had stopped making effort.
Asked if it was true that he was a backslider, the monk immediately admitted it was so.
"In bygone days, bhikkhu," Buddha told him, "the wise and good won a throne by sheer perseverance in the hour of need."
Then he told this story of the past.
Long, long ago when Brahmadatta was reigning in Baranasi, the Bodhisatta was reborn to his queen. On the day he was to be named, his royal parents gave a feast for eight hundred brahmans. After the meal, they asked the brahmans what their son”s destiny would be. Noting that the child showed promise of a glorious destiny, the soothsayers predicted that the child would become a mighty king endowed with every virtue. Winning fame through exploits with his five weapons, he would be without equal in all Jambudipa (India). Because of the brahmans” prophecy, the king and queen named their son Prince Five-Weapons.
When the prince was sixteen years old, the king gave him a thousand pieces of silver and sent him to study with a famous teacher in Takkasila, a city in Gandhara. The prince studied there for several years. When he had mastered all his subjects, the teacher presented him with a set of five weapons. The prince paid his respects to his master and left Takkasila to return to Baranasi.
On his way the prince came to a dense jungle. Some men who were camped at the edge of the jungle tried to stop him from going on. "Young man," they warned, "do not try to go through that forest. It is the haunt of a formidable ogre named Shaggy-grip who kills everyone who enters his territory."
Confident of his own strength, the prince was undaunted, but, sure enough, in the middle of the jungle, the hairy ogre confronted him. The monster made himself as tall as a palm-tree, with a head as big as a gazebo, eyes like mixing bowls, two sharp tusks, and a hawk-like beak. His distended belly was purple, and the palms of his hands were blue-black.
"Where do you think you”re going
" cried the monster. "Stop! You are mine!"
"Ogre," answered the prince calmly, "You do not scare me. Do not come near me, or I will kill you with a poisoned arrow!"
Bravely, the prince fitted an arrow dipped in deadly poison to his bow. He shot it at the monster, but it only stuck to the creature”s scruffy coat. The youth shot all fifty of his arrows, one after another, but they all stuck to the ogre”s unkempt fur.
Shaking himself, so that the arrows fell harmlessly at his feet, the ogre gave a roar and charged the prince. The young prince shouted defiance, drew his sword, and struck at the ogre, but, like the arrows, the sword merely got caught in the demon”s shaggy hair. Next the prince hurled his spear, but that, too, lodged in the demon”s thick pelt. He struck the ogre with his club, but the club joined the other weapons in sticking to the creature”s fur.
The prince maintained his stance, "Ogre, you have never before heard of me. I am Prince Five-Weapons. When I entered this forest, however, I put my trust not in these weapons — bow arrows, sword, spear, and club — but in myself! Now will I give you a blow which will crush you to smithereens." The prince hit the demon with his right fist, but his hand stuck fast to the hair. Next he aimed a blow with his left hand. He kicked the ogre with his right foot, and with his left. All he accomplished, however, was to get himself stuck to the monster with both hands and both feet.
"I will crush you to atoms!" he shouted, as he butted the ogre with his head, but that too stuck fast.
Though completely ensnared by all four limbs and his head, hanging helplessly like a doll from the ogre”s coat, the prince remained fearless and unda…
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