Cullanandiya Jātaka (No.222)

v.l. Cullanandaka

The Bodhisatta was once a monkey named Nandiya and, with his brother Cullanandiya, headed a band of eighty thousand monkeys. They had a blind mother, and finding that when they were away with the herd she never received the fruits they sent her, they decided to stay with her in a banyan-tree near a village. One day a brahmin, who had studied at Takkasilā, entered the forest with a bow and arrow. He had been warned by his teacher Pārāsariya to curb his wickedness, but he could find no way, apart from killing, of keeping his wife and child. Seeing the aged monkey, he prepared to shoot her, but her sons offered their lives in her stead. The brahmin killed first them and then the mother. On his way home he heard that lightning had hit his house and that his family was dead; he himself was thereupon swallowed up by the fires of hell.

The story was told in reference to Devadatta's wickedness. The hunter was Devadatta. J.ii.199-202.

Dictionary of Pali Proper Names, G P Malalasekera (1899-1973), which is available as printed version from