The story of Jada Bharata and its symbolic meaning is found in the Srimad Bhagavad Purana. Despite shaking off all attachments of the kingdom, sons, wealth, and so on, and retiring to the forest to meditate on Bhagavan Vasudeva, King Bharata had strayed from his path due to his attachment to a deer. He was born as a deer.
The deer was not the last birth of Bharata. He again was born as the son of a Brahmana. The boy, by the grace of Bhagavan, remembered his previous two births. He recalled how he had failed to get liberation from samsara (the cycle of birth and death) in his previous human birth due to attachment. He was afraid that if he fell prey to attachment in this birth too, he would have a similar fate. To avoid attachment, he pretended to be a dull and stupid fellow to the outside world. Along with that, he firmly clasped Bhagavan’s lotus feet with his mind.
Because other took him for a dull-witted person, he came to be known as ‘Jadabharata’ (Jada in Sanskrit means dull or idiotic). After the death of his father, brothers of Jada Bharata and other people in the neighborhood took advantage of him. As he was muscular and well-built, they made him work in the fields and extracted all kinds of hard labor from him. Despite it, Jada Bharata never complained. He did any work that was given to him, even without wages. Often he was give spoiled food by his brothers, which he ate without complaining.
Because of the merit earned in his previous births, Jada Bharata became spiritually awakened in his present life right from the birth. He realized his oneness with the all-blissful Atman, Supreme Self and never identified himself with the body. Such a realized soul is never affected by the pair of opposites like honor and ignominy, heat and cold, and so on. He used to move around wearing a dirty loin-cloth.