The monkey-king who made his own spine the bridge for eighty thousand to escape

A mango tree at the edge of the Ganges

There was once, on the banks of the Ganges, a mango tree of such size and antiquity that the river had circled around it for centuries without claiming it. Its roots reached down into the dark water. Its crown spread out over the gorge. Its fruit was famous — the size of a man's fist, golden when ripe, sweeter than any other mango in the four directions.

In this tree lived eighty thousand monkeys, ruled by a great being who in this birth had taken monkey-form. He was the Mahakapi — the Great Ape — and he was the Bodhisattva. He was the size of a young elephant. His coat was the colour of wet wood. His eyes were dark and steady.

The Mahakapi had given his troop one rule and only one rule about the mango tree: *एकं फलं गङ्गायां न पतेत् — ekam phalam gangayam na patet — "not one fruit shall fall into the Ganges."*

Why? Because if a fruit fell into the river, the river would carry it downstream. And downstream lay the city of Banaras, and the king of Banaras, and the king of Banaras was not yet kind. If a king tasted such a mango, he would seek the tree. If he found the tree, he would seek to own it. If he could not own it, he would seek to clear it.

The eighty thousand monkeys obeyed. For years they harvested only fruits hanging over land. Fruits hanging over the water they left untouched, and from those fruits the wind shook none, for the tree itself seemed to understand and held them tight.

But one season, a single mango grew on a branch the troop had not noticed — a branch hidden behind a tangle of creepers, hanging far out over the water. It ripened. It loosened. It fell. It struck the surface of the Ganges with a small clear sound. The river took it.

The king of Banaras finds the fruit

King Brahmadatta of Banaras was bathing that morning at the royal ghat. His attendants were pouring water from silver pots over his shoulders. A floating yellow shape drifted past. A servant fished it out and brought it to him.

It was a mango — but a mango unlike any in the king's gardens. Larger. Heavier. Streaked with red along its shoulder. The king cut a piece. He tasted it. He closed his eyes.

"Where," he said, "does this come from?"

His foresters were sent upstream. They followed the river day and night. On the third day they came to the great mango tree at the gorge. They saw the eighty thousand monkeys feasting on the fruit. They saw the Mahakapi presiding over them like a quiet king.

They returned and told the king. King Brahmadatta gathered his hunters and his archers. By dawn the next day his men had surrounded the tree. By noon the king himself had arrived in his chariot.

"I want every monkey on that tree dead by sunset," he said. "And every fruit harvested before the moon rises. The tree is mine."

The archers strung their bows.

The Bodhisattva seeing the trap

The Mahakapi heard the bowstrings. He climbed to the highest branch and looked. He saw the soldiers. He saw the king. He saw the eighty thousand of his own who in moments would be shot down like fruit.

He looked across the gorge. On the other side rose a bamboo grove — far enough that no monkey could leap to it. Far enough that no archer could shoot across it. If the troop could reach the bamboo, they would live.

The Mahakapi measured the distance with his eye. He himself, perhaps, could leap it. He alone had the size and the muscle. The others — the small ones, the mothers, the old — could not.

He did not hesitate.

He jumped.

He landed on a strong young bamboo stalk on the far side. He bent it and wrapped its end around his ankles, knotting it tight. Then he gathered his strength and leapt back across the gorge — but his ankles, tied to the bamboo, held him short. He stretched out his great body, hands reaching, and his fingertips just barely caught the lowest branch of the mango tree on his own side.

He hung there: ankles bound to the bamboo on the far bank, fingers gripping the mango branch on the near bank, his body stretched across the gorge above the river like a living rope.

He called to his troop: "*आगच्छत मम पृष्ठेन — agachchhata mama prishthena — Come! Cross by my back!*"

The eighty thousand understood at once. They ran. One after another, they raced along the Mahakapi's outstretched body — over his arms, over his chest, over his belly, over his thighs — and leapt down into the bamboo grove on the far side. Mothers carried infants. The old were pushed forward by the young. The whole troop poured across.

But there was one. The Mahakapi had a cousin in the troop named Devadatta — for in many of the past lives, the Buddha's great rival appears under that name — and Devadatta had long resented the Mahakapi's rule. Now he saw his chance. He climbed high into the tree. He leapt down with all his weight onto the centre of the Mahakapi's spine.

There was a sound. The Mahakapi's back broke.

He held on.

He did not let go of the branch. He did not loosen his ankles from the bamboo. The last of his troop ran across his broken body and reached safety.

When the last monkey had crossed, the Mahakapi hung there, broken, unable to pull himself across, unable to let himself drop into the river. His grip held only because his hands had locked around the branch in spasm.

The king of Banaras seeing what he had nearly done

King Brahmadatta had watched the whole thing from below. He had not given the order to shoot — he had been too astonished. Now he saw the great ape hanging across the gorge, broken, alive, having just emptied the entire tree of his subjects through the bridge of his own body.

The king dropped his bow. He ordered his men: "Bring him down. Gently. Bring him to me."

The soldiers stretched a sheet of cloth between four men. They climbed the tree. They cut the bamboo loose carefully. They lowered the Mahakapi into the cloth. They carried him down and laid him before the king.

The Mahakapi was dying. The king knelt beside him. He had never knelt beside an animal before.

"Ape-king," he said, "I do not know what to call you. I came to take your tree and your subjects' lives. I see now I was the lesser king. Tell me — before you go — what does a king do?"

The Mahakapi opened his eyes. His voice came thin.

"राजा प्रजानां सुखदुःख-विधाता। तेषां पीडां स्वशरीरेण वहेत्॥" (raja prajanam sukha-duhkha-vidhata / tesham pidam svasharirena vahet — "A king is the dispenser of his subjects' joy and sorrow. Their pain he must bear with his own body.")

He said it once. He said it again so the king would remember.

"They were eighty thousand," he said. "I was one. The arithmetic is simple. A king who would not die for eighty thousand has the title but not the office. Do not be that king."

The king bent his head to the ape's head and wept.

The Mahakapi died as evening fell. The king built a stupa over the great body — the first time, the chronicles say, that a king of Banaras built a stupa for a being not human. He kept the broken bamboo as a relic in his own bedroom for the rest of his life.

He ruled, after that day, very differently.

What the troop took with them

The eighty thousand monkeys, safe in the bamboo grove, mourned for many days. Then they went on. They lived. They had children. The children grew old and had children. For generations they told the story of the day the Mahakapi made his own back into a bridge.

The teaching the Buddha drew when he told this story was not aimed at monkeys. It was aimed at us — and especially at any who would lead. A leader is not the one whom the troop carries. A leader is the one across whom the troop is carried. When the bowstrings are drawn at the edge of the world, the leader's body is the bridge — and the leader does not pull away from the weight of the small feet running across.

There is a reason that even Devadatta, who broke the Mahakapi's back in his envy, was permitted by the Bodhisattva to cross. The bridge does not choose. The bridge holds for all.

A great ape stretched himself once between two riverbanks for the sake of his people. The river still runs there. The mango tree was lost long ago. The story has not been lost.