The grateful elephant — Edition Insights

The Frame and Its Function

Every story in this volume begins with a situational cue: “On a certain occasion the Teacher addressed the monks as follows.” This formula establishes the Buddha as the narrator, linking each tale to a specific teaching moment. In the excerpt from “King and Boar,” for instance, the Buddha uses a mango tree that turned sour through contact with nimbs to illustrate how “contact with the corrupt is a bad thing.” The frame does more than introduce the tale; it supplies the interpretive lens. The past-life narrative is always a demonstration of a moral or spiritual principle, and the closing line—often a single sentence like “Evil communications corrupt good manners”—drives the point home. This structure means the stories are never told for their own sake; they are evidence in a sermon.

Repetition and Variation in the Blind Men and the Elephant

The well-known parable of the blind men and the elephant appears here in a version that emphasizes repetitive phrasing and cumulative detail. The king’s servant lets each blind man feel a different part—head, ears, tusks, trunk, belly, legs, back, tail—and each time says, “This, O blind men, is what an elephant is like.” The blind men then report their findings in matching parallel clauses: “Your majesty, an elephant is like a water-pot,” “like a winnowing-basket,” “like a plow-share,” and so on. The repetition builds to a physical fight, after which the king is “delighted.” The Buddha’s application extends the metaphor: heretics, “blind, without eyes,” quarrel in the same way. The excerpt shows how Burlingame’s translation preserves the oral, incantatory quality of the original Pāli, with its balanced clauses and incremental listing.

Moral Conclusions and Their Brevity

The stories in this collection end with startling economy. After the narrative concludes, the Buddha often delivers a single line that encapsulates the lesson. In “The Grateful Elephant,” the title story, the moral is “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” In “Grateful Animals and Ungrateful Man,” it is “Driftwood is worth more than some men.” These proverbs are not elaborated; they stand as the final word. The effect is to compress complex narratives into memorable aphorisms. The reader is left to connect the tale to the tag, a process that requires attention to the story’s details. The brevity also reflects the oral tradition: the moral is a mnemonic hook. Burlingame’s translation does not expand or explain; it lets the stark juxtaposition of story and saying carry the weight.

Because these stories are selected from a larger work, they lack the connective tissue of the original commentary. Readers who encounter a tale that seems abruptly introduced or concluded should remember that each is a fragment of a longer discourse. The illustrations by Dorothy Lathrop, mentioned in the front matter, are not reproduced here; the text alone must carry the narrative. Pay attention to the repeated formulas—they are not redundancy but structure. The stories reward slow reading, especially aloud, where their rhythmic patterns become audible.

Reading the Jātakas, I remembered my grandfather’s slow voice, the same unhurried patience when he once quietly explained an old Cornish folktale to me by candlelight. Stories of animals learning gratitude felt less like lessons then, more like shared secrets. That feeling returned while leafing through Cornwall's Wonderland — Reading Companion, its gentle familiarity almost a whispered echo.