Buddhist narrative of the 'Rabbit in the Moon'

The legend that tells why there are rabbits on the moon, is found in Buddhist narratives such as "Jataka" that has been handed down in India. It has been recorded in many stories such as " Konjaku Monogatari Shu" that came to Japan . The contents are as follows.

A monkey , a fox , and a rabbit meet a shabby old man who is exhausted and lying down in the mountains. The three wanted to help the old man. The monkeys collected nuts, and the foxes caught fish from the river and fed them to the elderly. However, only the rabbit could not get anything, no matter how hard it was. The rabbit, who lamented his powerlessness, wanted to help the old man, and asked a monkey and a fox to set him on fire, and jumped into the fire to devote himself to serve as food for the shabby old man. The old man who saw this revealed himself as Teishakuten and raised the rabbit to the moon in order to convey the mercy of the rabbit's abandonment to posterity. It is said that the smoke-like shadows around the rabbit that looks like the moon are the smoke when the rabbit burns itself.


The characters in this narrative represent celestial bodies, each of which is the " moon" (monkey), the "star" (Sirius ), is the " fox, " Venus"  is the rabbit, and the "sun" is the old man (Teishakuten). Teishakuten is also interpreted as the sun before the winter when the light became weak, and the sun after the winter when the light was regained (= rejuvenated) by Teishakuten.

from https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9C%88%E3%81%AE%E5%85%8E