AI-generated interpretation of the horse-faced Yakkha mother giving her son the tracking charm at the boundary river. Clothing, jewellery, ages, humanlike body and luminous gesture are artistic choices; the text specifies a horse-like face and a tracking charm, without describing a luminous form.
AI-generated interpretation of the horse-faced Yakkha mother giving her son the tracking charm at the boundary river. Clothing, jewellery, ages, humanlike body and luminous gesture are artistic choices; the text specifies a horse-like face and a tracking charm, without describing a luminous form.
Overview
The Padakusalamāṇava-Jātaka traces its unnamed horse-faced female Yakkha to a queen of Benares. Questioned by her husband, the queen swears that wrongdoing should cause her to become such a being. The narrator places the transformation after her death. She lives in a mountain-foot forest cave and preys on travellers. After three years serving Vessavaṇa, identified in the note as lord of the Yakkhas, she receives permission to eat people within a territory thirty leagues long and five broad. This defined territory matters to the later escape; it is not a boundary for every Yakkha in Buddhist narrative.
She seizes a handsome brahmin and carries him toward the cave, but affection makes her spare him and keep him as her husband. She obtains food and clothing for him while continuing to eat human flesh herself. When she leaves, a huge stone closes the entrance to prevent his escape. Their son, the Bodhisatta, grows strong enough to move it. Although the narrator describes family affection, the blocked cave and the father’s fear also establish captivity. The father calls himself and the boy human, distinguishing them from the mother’s form.
The boy’s first escape with his father fails when she pursues and brings them back. He then asks her to describe the limits of their land. Using that knowledge, he carries his father to a boundary river, beyond which she stops. Unable to persuade them to return, she offers her son a means of livelihood: a charm that allows its possessor to follow tracks even twelve years old. The historical English translation calls the knowledge the lore of the philosopher’s stone, but the narrated use is tracking, not the transmutation of metals.
After giving the charm, she dies of grief. Her son returns to cremate her, extinguishes the funeral fire and offers coloured flowers before travelling with his father to Benares. The story continues beyond her death: he enters royal service, invokes her memory and traces a staged theft committed by the king and priest, including footsteps described as visible to him in the air. He repeatedly warns the king through stories before publicly exposing the culprits. The people kill them and enthrone the youth. Her parting gift therefore shapes the account’s political ending as well as the family’s separation.
The frame concerns a child able to recognise his father’s footprints, and the final identification names the earlier father as Kassapa and the gifted youth as the Buddha. The mother receives no personal name or later-birth identification. This account follows the complete selected story in Francis’s historical translation, including the son’s later adventures; it does not turn its supernatural mother into a description of human women or a universal Yakkha species.
Origins & earliest records
Selected Pāli Buddhist narrative in a historical English witness; no earliest oral date asserted.
Records & interpretation
Complete selected story and attached notes read; title and full preface checked. Pāli original not collated.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
The Jātaka, Volume III — No. 432
Complete narrative, frame, ending and attached notes, pp. 298–306. Hosted Pali Text Society/Luzac reprint; exact reprint date not independently verified. Preface assigns these pages to Francis.
Family & connections
A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Historical primary-text translationJātaka III No. 432Research access: 2026-10-27
Image credits
Modern AI interpretation of a historical literary accountAI-generated interpretation of the horse-faced Yakkha mother giving her son the tracking charm at the boundary river. Clothing, jewellery, ages, humanlike body and luminous gesture are artistic choices; the text specifies a horse-like face and a tracking charm, without describing a luminous form.
AI-generated interpretation of the horse-faced Yakkha mother giving her son the tracking charm at the boundary river. Clothing, jewellery, ages, humanlike body and luminous gesture are artistic choices; the text specifies a horse-like face and a tracking charm, without describing a luminous form.
