འཕགས་པ་གསར་འད་དམ་པ་མད་སྡའ་དབང་པའ་རྒྱལ་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.124

intro.124

The Buddha tells the goddess Bodhisattvasamuccayā that Jalavāhana had a wife, Jalāmbujagarbhā, and two sons, Jalāmbara and Jalagarbha. He and his sons went into the wilderness where they discovered a lake that was drying up, and the ten thousand fish in it were in danger of dying. A tree goddess appeared who told Jalavāhana that he should save the fish, so he constructed a shade made from branches for the fish. Then he went to King Sureśvaraprabha and obtained twenty elephants from him, and he used them to carry water to replenish the lake. He then sent his son Jalāmbara home to obtain as much food as possible, and he used that to feed the fish. Finally, he waded into the lake and recited the Dharma of dependent origination and the name of the Buddha Ratnaśikhin. At another time, he became intoxicated with alcohol and fell asleep. The ten thousand fish had died, and because of Jalavāhana’s recitation, they had been reborn in the Trāyastriṃśa paradise. They came to the sleeping Jalavāhana and made offerings of many pearls and caused flowers to rain on his home, upon the lake, and other places in the kingdom. The king summoned Jalavāhana, who believed these omens occurred because of the death of the fish. His son Jalāmbara went to the lake and saw that they had all died. The Buddha states that he was Jalavāhana; his father, Śuddhodana, was Jaṭiṃdhara, Jalavāhana’s father; his sons Rāhula and Ānanda were Jalāmbara and Jalagarbha, Jalavāhana’s sons; his wife Gopā was Jalāmbujagarbhā, Jalavāhana’s wife; his father-in-law, Daṇḍapāṇi, was the king; and the ten thousand devas from Trāyastriṃśa were the ten thousand fish. In Toh 557 the tree goddess is identified as being a previous life of the goddess Bodhisattvasamuccayā.