Ryokan Taigu- Author of the poem
It took place in a world
long long ago
they say:
a monkey, a rabbit,
and a fox
struck up a friendship,
mornings
frolicking field and hill
evenings
coming home to the forest, ,
living thus
while the years went by,
when Indra,
sovereign of skies,
hearing of this,
curious to know
if it as true,
turned himself into an old man,
tottering along,
made his way to where they were.
“you three,”
he said,
“are of separate species
yet I’m told play together
with a single heart.
If what I’ve heard
is true,
pray save an old man
who’s hungry!”
then he set his staff aside,
sat down to rest.
Simple enough, they said,
and presently
the monkey appeared
from the grove behind
bearing nuts
he’d gathered there,
and the fox returned
from the rivulet in front,
clamped in his jaws
a fish he’d caught.
but the rabbit,
though he hopped and hopped
everywhere
couldn’t find anything at all,
while others
cursed him because
his heart was not like theirs.
Miserable me!
he thought
and then he said,
“Monkey, go cut me
firewood!
Fox, build me
a fire with it!”
and when they’d done
what he asked,
he flung himself
into the midst of the flames,
made himself an offering
for an unknown old man.
When the old man
saw this
his heart withered.
He looked up to the sky,
cried aloud,
then sank to the ground,
and in a while,
beating his breast,
said
you three friends
has done his best,
but what the rabbit did
touches me most!
Then he made the rabbit
whole again
and gathering the dead body
up in the arms,
took it and
laid it to rest
in the palace of the moon.
From that time till now
the story’s been told.
this tale
of how the rabbit
came to be
in the moon,
and even I
when I hear it
find the tears
soaking the sleeve of my robe
The poem is a retelling of one of the Jataka stories, tales of the Buddha in his earlier incarnations when he preformed various acts of self-sacrifice. Ryokan follows the version of the tale found in chapter five of the “Konjaku monogatari”, a collection of stories in Japanese, many Buddhist in nature, compiled around 1100. This version relates the Jataka tale to the old Chinese legend of a rabbit who inhabits the moon. There are numerous versions of the poem with slight textual variations; I follow the text given in Yoshino Hideo’s collection, pp. 319-22
