Jataka Tales for Kids: 5 Stories and What They Teach

The Jataka tales are among the oldest stories in India, and among the most beautiful. They are a large collection of stories, several hundred of them in the Pali tradition, about the previous lives of the Buddha before he became enlightened. In each story the future Buddha, called the Bodhisatta, is born in a different form: sometimes a prince, sometimes a merchant, very often an animal, a deer, a monkey, a hare or a bird. In every life he shows a virtue: generosity, honesty, courage, patience or compassion.

The Jatakas were so loved in ancient India that they were carved in stone on the great stupas of Bharhut and Sanchi and painted on the walls of the caves at Ajanta, where people still go to see them. Some of the stories, like the monkey and the crocodile, also appear in the Panchatantra, because good stories travelled freely between traditions.

Here are five Jataka tales for kids, retold simply, with the lesson each one carries.

1. The hare in the moon

Once, four friends lived together in a forest: a hare, a monkey, a jackal and an otter. The hare, the wisest of them, taught the others that it was good to give to those in need. One day an old, hungry traveller came by and asked them for food. The monkey gathered fruit from the trees. The otter brought fish from the river. The jackal brought what food he could find.

But the hare could only gather grass, and a human cannot eat grass. So the hare asked the traveller to light a fire, and then, with nothing else to give, prepared to offer himself as food by leaping into it. But the flames did not burn him. The traveller revealed himself as Sakka, king of the gods, who had come to test them. Moved by the hare’s selflessness, Sakka drew the image of the hare on the face of the moon, so that everyone, forever, would remember his generosity. That, the story says, is the hare you can see in the full moon.

What it teaches: true generosity means giving what we can, even when we have very little. Next full moon, go outside with your child and look for the hare.

2. The monkey king’s bridge

A great monkey king lived with eighty thousand monkeys in a mango tree beside the river Ganga. One day a king and his men discovered the tree and, wanting its mangoes, surrounded it to capture the monkeys. The monkeys were trapped. The monkey king leapt across the river, tied a long vine to his waist, and leapt back, but the vine was just too short to reach. So he stretched his own body across the gap, holding the vine at one end and the branch at the other, and became a living bridge. One by one, all the monkeys ran across his back to safety.

The last monkey across, who had always been jealous of the king, jumped down hard on his back on purpose, and the king was gravely injured. The human king, who had watched everything, was so moved by the monkey king’s courage that he had him gently brought down and cared for him. The monkey king told him that a true leader cares for those he leads more than for himself.

What it teaches: real leaders serve the people who depend on them. It is a wonderful story to tell a child who has just been made a class monitor or team captain.

3. The golden swan

A poor widow lived with her daughters. In a past life, her husband had been reborn as a swan with golden feathers. Seeing his family struggling, the swan visited them and gave them one golden feather at a time, which they could sell. For a while, they lived comfortably.

But the mother grew greedy. Why wait for one feather at a time? The next time the swan came, she grabbed him and pulled out all his feathers at once. But feathers taken against the swan’s will were no longer gold; they turned into ordinary white feathers. The swan’s feathers grew back white, and he flew away and never returned.

What it teaches: greed destroys the very thing that was helping us. It is the same lesson as the goose that laid the golden eggs, and children often enjoy noticing that the same idea appears in stories from different parts of the world.

4. The banyan deer

A king loved to hunt deer, so he kept a herd enclosed in a park. Every day a deer would be killed for his table, and each time the deer panicked and many were hurt in the chase. The leader of the herd, a golden banyan deer, arranged that the deer would take turns, one each day, so the others would be spared the terror.

One day the turn fell to a mother deer about to have a fawn. She begged to wait until her baby was born. The banyan deer could not ask another deer to take her place, so he went himself and laid his head on the block. The king, who had once promised the banyan deer his safety, was astonished. When he heard why the deer had come, he was so moved that he spared him, and then, at the deer’s request, spared all the deer in the park, and eventually all the animals in his kingdom.

What it teaches: one act of compassion can change the heart of even a powerful person.

5. The quails and the net

A large flock of quails lived in a forest, and a hunter caught many of them each day by throwing a net over them. The wise leader of the quails had a plan: the next time the net falls, we will all push our heads through the mesh together and fly up at the same moment, carrying the net with us. It worked. Day after day, the quails lifted the net together, dropped it in a thorn bush and escaped.

But one day two quails began to quarrel about who was lifting more and who was lifting less. The quarrel spread. The leader saw what was coming and left with the quails who would listen. The next time the hunter’s net fell, the quarrelling quails argued instead of lifting together, and they were all caught.

What it teaches: united we are strong; when we quarrel, we lose what made us safe. A perfect story for siblings.

Sharing Jataka tales with children

The Jataka tales are gentle and serious at once, and some of them, like the hare and the monkey king, involve real sacrifice. Children handle this well if you tell the stories calmly and focus on the virtue rather than the danger. Afterwards, ask which character they would most like to be like, and why.

Stories like these are at the heart of our live storytelling and moral stories classes, where children hear the great story traditions of India, discuss them together and learn to retell them in their own voice.