The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c17.22

c17.22

We make the acquaintance of a special kind of dancers in the "jumpers," the langhananaṭaka of the Dubbaca Jātaka, namely, an acrobat who knows how to jump over a number of lances sunk in the ground and placed one behind the other. The Boddhisatta who is born in an acrobat family, learns from a naṭaka the art of jumping and tours with his teacher exhibiting his art. "His teacher, however"—so it is said further (I. 430) —"knew how to jump over four lances, not over five." Now one day he appeared in a village and placed, while he was drunk, five lances on the ground, one behind the other, with the intention of jumping over them. Then the Boddhisatta said, "You don't know the art of jumping over five lances, my teacher; take away one lance, for if you try to leap over the five lances, you will be pierced by the fifth lance and die." "You don't know what I can do," answered the teacher in a drunken fit, and leaps, without paying heed to his pupil's words, over the four but is fixed by the fifth, as the madhuka¹ flower is fixed on its stem, and falls to the ground crying loudly."