The story tells of Prince Mahāsattva encountering a starving tigress unable to feed her cubs and offering his own body. It became an extreme image of bodhisattva compassion and self-giving.
Source and historical status
This is sacred didactic literature, not a prescription that Buddhist practitioners should harm themselves. The article explicitly treats the self-sacrifice as a religious narrative and ethical symbol.
The narrative in context
The story tells of Prince Mahāsattva encountering a starving tigress unable to feed her cubs and offering his own body. It became an extreme image of bodhisattva compassion and self-giving.
What the story teaches
The narrative illustrates the Mahāyāna ideal of cultivating compassion over many lives on the path to buddhahood.
How to read the starving-tigress story
The prince who gives his body to a starving tigress appears in Mahāyāna Buddhist narrative traditions in more than one textual form. The story dramatizes extreme generosity and bodhisattva compassion, and later art helped spread its imagery. Because versions differ, a careful account should identify the tradition being summarized rather than present every detail as belonging to one fixed canonical text.
