Vessantara Jātaka
story of one of Gautama Buddha's past lives
The Vessantara Jātaka is one of the most popular jātakas of Theravada Buddhism. The Vessantara Jātaka tells the story of one of Gautama Buddha's past lives, about a very compassionate and generous prince, Vessantara, who gives away everything he owns, including his children, thereby displaying the virtue of perfect generosity. It is also known as the Great Birth Sermon.
The tale of Prince Vessantara is celebrated as an annual festival in Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Cambodia.
Accounts
The story has slight variations in other parts of Asia: in Tibet, the story is known as the Jīnaputra Arthasiddhi Sūtra and the prince known as Arthasiddhi; in China, it is known as Taizi Xudanuo Jing and the prince is known as Sudana (須大拏太子). He is known as Shudaina-taishi in Japan.
When Gautama Buddha visited his father's kingdom for the first time after he achieved enlightenment, elders of the ruling dynasty did not pay him respect out of conceit, since they were older than the former Prince Siddhartha. The Buddha miraculously appeared in the air above his relatives. His father was the first to bow down and admit that it was time to pay respect to his own son. Other members of the dynasty then bowed down and accepted the religion.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vessantara Jātaka” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.