Ja 237Saketa Jātaka
Pāli / Sanskrit:Sāketajātaka
“Why are hearts cold”—This story the Master told during a stay near Saketa, about a brahmin named Saketa. Both the circumstances that suggested the story and the story itself have already been given in the First Book.
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– Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births
– Book 2 Dukanipāta
237. Saketa Jātaka
“Why are hearts cold,” etc.—This story the Master told during a stay near Saketa, about a brahmin named Saketa. Both the circumstances that suggested the story and the story itself have already been given in the First Book.
PTS vp En 163 PTS vp Pali 235 …And when the Tathagata had gone to the monastery, the Brother asked, “How, Sir, did the love begin? “and repeated the first stanza—
Why are hearts cold to one—O Buddha, tell!—
And love another so exceeding well?”
The Master explained the nature of love by the second stanza:
“Those love they who in other lives were dear,
As sure as grows the lotus in the mere.”
After this discourse was ended, the Master identified the Birth—“These two people were the brahmin and his wife in the story; and I was their son.”
The Jātaka, or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births , edited by E.B. Cowell , published by The Cambridge University Press.
– Vol. 1, translated by Robert Chalmers , 1895.
– Vol. 2, translated by W.H.D. Rouse , 1895 .
– Vol. 3, translated by H.T. Francis and R.A. Neil , 1897.
– Vol. 4, translated by W.H.D. Rouse , 1901.
– Vol. 5, translated by H.T. Francis , 1905.
– Vol. 6, translated by E.B. Cowell and W.H.D. Rouse , 1907.
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Scanned, proofed and formatted at sacred-texts.com, January 2006–February 2010, by John Bruno Hare and others. Thanks to the Sacred Texts Archive for making these texts available in digital form.
Prepared for SuttaCentral by Bhikkhu Sujato .
The “…” is an abbreviation carried over from the Pāli original itself, called peyyāla. The early canon was memorized and recited, so passages repeated verbatim from a preceding discourse were commonly contracted to an elision mark rather than written out in full. Venerable Thích Minh Châu's translation preserves this convention. Some texts therefore look short — but that is the canonical form, not missing content or a truncated translation. The elided passages can be read in full in the preceding discourses of the same chapter.
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