The Hare in the Moon

Also known as Sasa Jataka

• 3 minute read
• Ages 7-11
• Jataka Tales

Four friends lived at the edge of a forest: an otter, a jackal, a monkey and a hare.

The hare was the wisest of them, and one evening he told the others that on the next full-moon day they should each give food to anyone who came asking, because giving was the best thing a creature could do.

The other three agreed. It seemed easy enough.

What each of them had

The otter went to the river and found seven fish that a fisherman had buried in the sand and forgotten, and brought them back and set them aside for a guest.

The jackal found a lizard and a pot of curd left at a field hut, and brought those.

The monkey gathered mangoes.

And the hare sat and thought about what he had.

He ate grass. That was all. Nobody who came asking would want grass, and there was nothing else in his life at all, and he could not go and find something the way the others had.

So he decided that if a guest came, he would give the only thing he had that was worth anything, which was himself.

The visitor

On the full-moon day an old brahmin came along the path, and he went to each of them in turn.

The otter offered the fish. The jackal offered the curd and the lizard. The monkey offered the mangoes. He thanked all three and said he would come back later.

Then he came to the hare.

"I have nothing to give you but myself," said the hare. "Make a fire, and when it has burned down I will jump into it, and you will have a meal."

The brahmin made a fire.

And the hare, without being asked twice and without any hesitation at all, shook his coat three times so that any insects living in it would fall out and not be harmed with him, and jumped in.

The fire

The fire did not burn him.

It was cold. He sat in the middle of it entirely unhurt and looked out, and the old brahmin was not an old brahmin any more.

"I am Sakka, king of the gods," he said. "I came to see whether it was true."

He reached up and took hold of the mountain beside them and squeezed it, and juice ran out of the rock, and he took that and painted the shape of a hare onto the face of the moon.

"So that it does not get forgotten," he said.

And it has not.