Kalāya-muṭṭhi Jātaka

“A foolish monkey.” The Master told this story while he was at Jetavana. It is about a King of Kosala.

One rainy season, rebellions broke out on his borders. The troops stationed there, after two or three battles in which they failed to conquer their adversaries, sent a message to the King. In spite of the season and in spite of the rains, he took the field. He encamped before Jetavana Park. Then he began to think, “It is a bad season for a military campaign. Every crevice and hollow is full of water. The road is muddy. I’ll go visit the Master. He will be sure to ask ‘where are you going?’ Then I will tell him. It is not only in events of the future life that our Master protects me, but he protects in the things which we see now. So if my campaign is not to prosper, he will say ‘It is a bad time to go, Sire.’ But if I am to succeed, he will say nothing.” So he went into the park, and after greeting the Master, he sat down on one side.

(It was a common belief in India at that time that priests and holy men could see the future. The King of Kosala apparently did not know much about the Buddha’s teaching or he would never have thought to ask him about a military campaign.)

“From where do you come, Oh King,” the Master asked, “at this unseasonable hour?”

“Sir,” he replied, “I am on my way to subdue a border uprising, and I came first to bid you farewell.”

To this the Master said, “So it happened before, that mighty monarchs, before setting out for war, have listened to the word of the wise, and turned back from an unseasonable expedition.” Then, at the King’s request, he told this story from the past.

Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, he had a counselor who was his right-hand man. He gave the King advice on all things spiritual and secular.

There was a rebellion on the frontier, and the troops who were stationed there sent the King a message. The King then started out even though it was the rainy season. He made camp in his park. And there the Bodhisatta stood before the King.

The soldiers had steamed some peas for the horses and poured them out into a trough. One of the monkeys that lived in the park jumped down from a tree, filled his mouth and hands with the peas, and then leapt back up again, sitting down in a tree to eat.

As he ate, one pea fell from his hand onto the ground. He climbed down from the tree to look for the lost pea, but in doing so, he dropped all of the other peas. He looked and looked but he could not find the single pea that he had dropped, and now he had also lost all of the other peas. So he climbed up his tree again, and sat still - very glum - looking like someone who had lost 1,000 gold coins in some lawsuit.

Figure: The Sad and Foolish Monkey

The King observed what the monkey had done and pointed it out to the Bodhisatta. “Friend, what do you think of that?” he asked, to which the Bodhisatta replied, “King, this is what fools do. They spend 100 gold coins to win one silver one.” And he went on to repeat the first stanza:

“A foolish monkey, living in the trees,

Oh King, when both his hands were full of peas,

Has thrown them all away to look for one.

There is no wisdom, Sire, in such as these.”

Then the Bodhisatta approached the King and addressed him again, repeated the second stanza:

“Such are we, Oh mighty monarch, such all those that greedy be,

Losing much to gain a little, like the monkey and the pea.”

On hearing this the King turned around and went straight back to Benares. But the rebels were told that the King had left his capital to destroy his enemies, so they hurried away from the borders.

At the time when this story was told, the rebels ran away in the same fashion. The King, after listening to the Master’s lesson, rose and took his leave, and he went back to Sāvatthi.

The Master, after this discourse was at an end, identified the birth: “In those days Ānanda was the King, and I was the wise counselor.”

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