A nine-colored deer saves a drowning man and asks only that he keep its secret. Then the king offers a huge reward, and the man leads an army to the deer.
The Nine-Colored Deer is a Buddhist jataka, one of the stories of the Buddha's earlier lives, and in China it is best known from the Sutra of the Nine-Colored Deer, translated into Chinese by Zhi Qian in the 3rd-century kingdom of Wu. A deer saves a drowning man who swears to keep his secret; the man betrays him for the king's reward, and when the king learns the truth he spares the deer, while the traitor breaks out in sores. A mural from the Northern Wei dynasty (386–534) in Mogao Cave 257 at Dunhuang paints the whole story, and in 1981 the Shanghai Animation Film Studio made it into a much-loved cartoon. This version follows the sutra but gives the queen a gentler ending: she sees that she was wrong.
故事告诉我们
Repay kindness and keep your promises; whoever betrays a friend for money will be found out in the end. The deer also shows that telling the truth calmly, even in danger, takes real courage.
适合
Ages 4–10
讲给孩子听的小贴士
Before you start, look up pictures of the Cave 257 mural at Dunhuang or stills from the 1981 cartoon The Nine-Colored Deer.
Make Tiaoda's oath big and dramatic; when it comes true later, children will gasp.
Afterwards, ask: if you were Tiaoda and saw the king's notice, what would you have done?
常见问题
What is the story of the Nine-Colored Deer?
A deer with a nine-colored coat saves a drowning man, who promises never to reveal where it lives. When the queen wants the deer's skin and the king offers a rich reward, the man leads the king's army to it. The deer tells the king the truth, the king sets it free, and the traitor breaks out in sores, just as he had sworn.
Where does the Nine-Colored Deer story come from?
It is a Buddhist jataka tale about one of the Buddha's earlier lives as a deer. The fullest Chinese telling is the Sutra of the Nine-Colored Deer, translated by Zhi Qian in the 3rd century, and the story is painted as a long strip of pictures in Cave 257 of the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang.
What is the moral of the Nine-Colored Deer?
Be grateful, keep your word, and never betray someone who helped you for the sake of money. The story also praises the deer's selflessness and the courage to tell the truth when in danger.
Narrator
The Nine-Colored Deer
Tiaoda
The Crow
The King
The Queen
