The Great Ape and the Man in the Chasm

Also known as Mahakapi Jataka

• 4 minute read
• Ages 8-12
• Jataka Tales

A villager went into the forest looking for a lost cow and got lost himself, and after two days of wandering he fell into a rocky chasm.

It was deep and the sides were sheer, and there was nothing at the bottom but stones and a little water.

He was there for ten days.

He shouted at first and then stopped, because nobody was going to hear him, and he lived on what he could reach and got weaker.

The ape

On the tenth day a great ape came to the edge of the chasm looking for fruit and saw him.

The ape looked down at him for a while and then said he would get him out.

He went and found a rock about the weight of a man, and he practised. He carried it up the side of the chasm several times, from bottom to top, to find out whether he could manage the weight, because he did not want to get halfway with a man on his back and fail.

When he was sure, he climbed down.

"Get on."

And he carried the man up the whole face of the chasm and set him down at the top, and then he lay on the ground and could not move, because it had taken everything he had.

What he asked

"I am going to sleep for a while," the ape said. "I am too tired to be careful and there are animals in this forest. Keep watch for me, and then I will show you the road home."

The man said he would.

The ape lay down and went to sleep.

What the man did

And the man sat there and looked at him, and thought about how far it was to the village, and about how hungry he was, and about the fact that a great ape is a great deal of meat.

He picked up a stone.

He was extremely weak, and the blow was not a good one. The ape woke up.

He got to his feet with blood running into his eyes and did not attack the man and did not shout at him. He climbed a little way up a tree and sat there, and looked down.

"I see," he said.

The road

Then he came down to the lower branches, so the man could hear him properly, and he told him something.

"You cannot find the road on your own. You have been lost for twelve days and you will die out here. So I am going to go along the branches above you, and you follow the blood."

And that is what happened.

The ape went ahead through the trees, bleeding, and the man walked underneath following the trail of it on the ground, and it took most of a day, and at the edge of the forest the ape stopped.

"There is your village," he said.

And he went back into the trees.