ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how one jātaka, known as 'The Tale of the Tigress', may be interpreted from the viewpoint of human-animal relationality. It introduces the genre and the role of animals in it, then summarizes the tale, and finally suggests an interpretation. From a strict Buddhist view, jātakas, as well as other Buddhist texts dealing with animals, are really not about humans and human-animal relations but, rather, are about doctrinal metaphors and relations between humans. Radical Buddhist interpretation of the tale takes it as an instruction to sacrifice oneself for the buddhahood. Moreover, in Tibetan jātakas, animals other than the animal-form Buddha are credited with Buddhist virtues. The jātakas presuppose two things that scholars of real life human-animal relationships have found hard to explain, namely, that interspecies communication and understanding of the other's way of experiencing the world is possible.
